H.E. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
President
The Kremlin
Moscow
Russia
Via Fax: + 7 095 206 91 11/ 206 41 68
Vienna, 18 December 2000
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors and media executives, strongly condemns the assault on an investigative reporter in Moscow.
According to our sources, Oleg Luriye, a journalist with the newspaper Novaďa Gazeta, was attacked by unknown assailants early in the morning on 17 December. Luriye and his wife were about to park their car when five persons approached them. The attackers locked Luriye’s wife in the car and started beating him. Luriye believes the assault was directly connected to his work since he was not robbed of any valuables even though he offered to hand over money and his mobile phone. Prior to the attack, the journalist had been investigating the recently closed Mabetex case, in which a Swiss company had allegedly bribed senior members of the Yeltsin government. This incident is the latest of a series of disturbing threats and assaults directed at the journalists of Novaďa Gazeta.
On 12 May, Igor Domnekov, another journalist with Novaďa Gazeta, was attacked in front of the entrance to his apartment building. Suffering from severe head injuries, the journalist never regained consciousness and died on 16 July as a result of his injuries. It is believed that his attackers mistook him for another investigative reporter for Novaďa Gazeta, Oleg Sultanov, who lives in the same building.
Sultanov says that he has been subject to threats from the Federal Security Service for his reporting. Novaďa Gazeta has published numerous articles on corruption, implicating people in the security services. Sultanov is now being protected by bodyguards. Aside from its investigative reporting into corruption, Novaďa Gazeta has on several occasions criticised the actions of Russian forces in Chechnya.
On 27 April, the magazine received a warning from the Ministry of Information for publishing an interview with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. Furthermore, an editor-in-chief of a local branch of Novaďa Gazeta, Yevgeny Rukin, was arrested at the beginning of the year for “abuse of authority”.
It is IPI’s belief that these incidents are directly related to the reporting undertaken by Novaďa Gazeta and its journalists and thus outright violations of everyone’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” as guaranteed by Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In addition, physical harassment and other measures of intimidation foster a climate in which journalists are more readily inclined to practice self-censorship in order to escape retribution for their reporting. This is detrimental to the free flow of ideas and to any democratic society.
In the light of these worrying developments, we urge Your Excellency to do everything in your power to ensure the safety of journalists working in Russia. Moreover, we urge you to ensure that there is a thorough investigation into the assault on Luriye and the other attacks and threats against Nova Gazeta reporters and that those responsible are brought swiftly to justice.
We thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
