Chechnya News
2004 Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Russia
At times, officials or unidentified individuals used force to prevent the circulation of issues of publications that were in disfavor with the government. For example, on February 28, police in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan Republic, stopped a truck carrying 143,000 copies of the local newspaper Puls Zhizni. When the newspaper's editor Yelena Chernobrovkina arrived at the scene, she found the newspapers unloaded from the truck and guarded by a group of approximately 30 men in civilian clothes, who would not identify themselves. Chernobrovkina said that among the group she spotted two high ranking Tatarstan police officials. After several hours, police confiscated the newspapers without explanation. On July 8, in Vladivostok, unknown persons seized 50,000 copies of the local newspaper Yezhednevniye Novosti and beat the driver of the truck carrying them from the printing plant. Shortly thereafter, police confiscated the remaining 150 copies of the paper. According to the newspaper's manage ... [Read More]
Russia
High profile cases of murdered or kidnapped journalists from earlier years remained unsolved. The cases of missing or murdered journalists from 2002 include: Natalya Skryl, correspondent for the Taganrog newspaper Nashe Vremya; Sergey Kalinovskiy, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets-Smolensk; Valeriy Ivanov, editor-in-chief of Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye; Aleksandr Plotnikov, founder of the newspaper Gostinyi Dvor; Chuvash reporter Nikolay Vasilyev; Igor Salikov, head of information security for Moskovskiy Komsomolets-Penza; Yuriy Frolov, deputy director of Propaganda Publishing; and Ilyas Magomedov, head of the independent station, Groznyy Television. The cases of murdered journalists from 2001 include: Vladimir Kirsanov, a local newspaper editor from Kurgan, and Eduard Markevich, editor of Novyye Reft in Reftinskiy. ... [Read More]
Russia
The Government owns nearly one-fifth of the 12,000 registered newspapers and periodicals in the country and exerts significant influence over state-owned publications. In March the opposition newspaper Russkii Obozrevatel almost ceased publishing in the Republic of Bashkortastan; the newspaper's founder could not find a company in the Republic willing to publish the newspaper and was forced to publish in another oblast. A group of private distributors came together to produce the newspaper; however, many were threatened by local government officials with revocation of their licenses. ... [Read More]
Russia
In July Gleb Pavlovkskiy, head of the Effective Policy Foundation, sold his web site to the Russian State TV and Radio Company (VGTRK), a large conglomerate that includes all the government-owned media assets. The media community had previously considered the web site to be a de facto Kremlin media outlet.Government agencies continued to bring lawsuits and other legal actions against journalists and journalistic organizations during the year, the majority of them in response to unfavorable coverage of government policy or operations. The GDF estimated that several hundred such cases had been brought in 2001. Judges rarely found in favor of the journalists; in the majority of cases, the Government succeeded in either intimidating or punishing them. In July the Central District Court of Sochi ordered the newspaper Sochi and correspondent Sergey Zolovkin to pay $3,175 and $1,587 (105,000 and 50,000 rubles), to the Krasnodar region administration for a ... [Read More]
Washington HyperFile - East Asia/Pacific Edition
411 Transcript: Defense Secretary Cohen Interview on Lehrer News Hour ... (January 10 Department of Transportation news release) (900) ... (January 11 Department of Commerce news release) (280) ... [Read More]
Washington HyperFile - East Asia/Pacific Edition
303 Text: Gilman Nov.3 News Release on North Korea Report ... [Read More]
USIA: Global Issues, September 1996 - Begleiter
This phenomenon is often referred to as the "filter" or"gatekeeper" role of the news media, which often "force-feeds"new ideas, events, and trends into the public stream ofconsciousness. It may be becoming less influential. Screeningmany topics out of an individual's daily information diet canhave the disastrous consequence of preventing important news frompenetrating the public's consciousness. ... The profusion of television channels and computer sources demandsthat individuals screen their information intake, sometimes notvery carefully. Television surveys reveal that people sat forhours absorbing every minute detail of the O.J. Simpson murdertrial on television, then switched off their sets when the newsreturned on CNN and other stations. ... [Read More]
Russia
Freedom of the press came under the greatest challenge in the country's farthest regions. On April 14 local authorities in the city of Saratov made changes to a front-page article in the local issue of the Moscow-based daily, Izvestiya, which leveled criticism against Saratov Governor Dmitriy Ayatskov. Phrases containing "unfriendly" content were edited out prior to the publication. Mikhail Kozhokin, Izvestiya's editor in chief, described this censoring action as an example of "the new phenomenon of oblast-level censorship." On April 19 St. Petersburg police confiscated the entire issue of the local newspaper, Moya Stolitsa, saying that the newspaper "lacked proper registration documentation." However, according to editor in chief Aleksey Razoryonov, the real issue was the newspaper's political leanings, not the registration documentation. The newspaper frequently carried articles critical of St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. According ... [Read More]
G - Eurasia Overview
The terrorists, who included several female suicide bombers wearing explosive “suicide” vests, placed several mines throughout the theater and threatened to begin killing the hostages unless their demands were met. The leader of the attack was identified by the Chechen mujahidin news agency Kavkaz Tsentr, and later by Russian news agencies, as Movsar Barayev, commander of the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment (SPIR) of the Chechen State Defense Committee (Majlis al-Shura). On 24 October, the Arabic news agency Al-Jazirah identified the group as the previously unknown “Sabotage and Military Surveillance Group of the ‘Riyadh al-Salikhin’ Martyrs” (a.k.a. the Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs). A group member sa ... [Read More]
Russia Public Announcement
U.S. Department of State [Read More]
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