NEWSWATCH: “This Week Marks the 10th Anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya’s Murder; The legacy of the fearless Russian journalist’s muckraking reporting still lives on.” – The Nation

Anna Politkovskaya file photo

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Publisher and Editor of The Nation, memorializes slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on the 10-year anniversary of Politkovskaya’s assassination, and considers some of the dangers and other challenges impacting Russian journalists.

It is 10 years since Russia and the world lost a great and courageous journalist. The killing of Anna Politkovskaya on October 7, 2006, was horrifying and shocking, but not unexpected. As Oleg Panfilov, head of Moscow’s Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said upon learning of her murder, ‘There are journalists who have this fate hanging over them. I always thought something would happen to Anya, first of all because of Chechnya.’ It was ‘a savage crime,’ said former Russian president-and the father of glasnost-Mikhail Gorbachev. ‘It is a grave crime against the country, against all of us.’ Politkovskaya was just 48 years old when she was found in the foyer of her apartment building, shot in the head with a pistol. Her unflinching reporting for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta on the Chechen War’s human-rights abuses, corruption, and brutality made her one of Russia’s bravest journalists.

Even prior to her death, Politkovskaya reportedly was the victim of human rights abuses at the hands of government forces.

On one of her many reporting trips to Chechnya, Politkovskaya was detained and beaten by Russian troops who threw her into a pit, threatened to rape her, and performed a mock execution. ‘If it were up to me,’ an officer told her, ‘I’d shoot you.’ Yet numerous death threats never slowed or stopped her. In fact, when she was killed, Politkovskaya was at work on an article revealing torture of Chechen civilians by security forces loyal to the region’s pro-Moscow prime minister.

Journalists in Russia have faced violence and government attempts to dominate media.

Since 1992, 54 journalists have been killed in post-Soviet Russia – most in unsolved contract executions. * * * … more than 80 percent of the people get their news from state-controlled television …. Ten years after Politkovskaya’s murder, media freedom in Russia confronts growing challenges. … an array of media regulations and laws give state media additional protection and privileges-in particular state television. Russia’s criminal code has several provisions that could be used against journalists, yet the only article designed to protect journalists’ rights-criminal liability for “obstruction of the lawful professional activities of journalists” – is used rarely.

The Russian government also is targeting the internet.

Increasingly restrictive regulation of the Internet is troubling. The recently introduced ‘Yarovaya law’ … which includes a range of draconian measures under the guise of fighting terrorism, has raised human-rights activists’ alarms ….

There is said to be a culture of impunity surrounding attacks and threats targeting journalists in Russia.

[Nadia Azhgikhina, executive secretary of Russia’s Union of Journalists] believes the culture of impunity – the ongoing failure to hold accountable those who threaten, attack, or kill journalists – ‘poses a real threat to media freedom and democratic development itself.’

Click here for Katrina vanden Heuvel/The Nation: “This Week Marks the 10th Anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya’s Murder; The legacy of the fearless Russian journalist’s muckraking reporting still lives on”

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