Paul Goble
Vienna, August 7 – The Moscow Human Rights Bureau today called on U.S.-funded Radio Liberty and domestic stations which support democracy not to give air time to racists and “ultra-right” extremists lest the stations not only enable such people to spread their poisonous views but even legitimize their ideas in the minds of many impressionable radio listeners.
The appeal, which was written by the bureau’s head Aleksandr Brod and featured on the bureau’s website, argues that these stations, who invite such “national radicals” in their pursuit of higher ratings are giving these enemies of democracy a larger audience and exacerbating ethnic tensions there (antirasizm.ru/news.php?page=1).
Until recently, the appeal begins, only “marginal media of the ultra-right kind” engaged in this most unfortunate form of “the ratings disease” by inviting national radicals to appear on their programs, appearances that did in fact boost their ratings even if it had other consequences as well.
But in recent months, this “disease has spread to central television channels and radio stations,” including those like Radio Liberty and Ekho Moskvy which enjoy a reputation for supporting free discussion and democracy rather than spreading the noxious ideals of anti-immigrant groups or anti-American activists.
Recently, the appeal continues, Ekho Moskvy had Islamist Geydar Dzhemal and Movement against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) head Aleksandr Belov on its programs. And Radio Liberty gave an entire hour to former Duma deputy Andrey Savel’yev, “whose chauvinist and racist views are well-known.”
“It is not difficult to understand that the utility of such discussions and interviews to society varies between zero and the sharply negative,” the appeal says. Young Russians listening to such programming, Brod’s center said, could in some cases take exactly the same kind of actions that “racist Internet sites” advocate.
“The organizers of the airwaves cannot fail to understand this,” the appeal acknowledges, but their argument that they invite such people not to help spread the ideas of the latter but rather to ensure that all points of view are presented and thus to allow the extremists to expose the weakness of their positions relative to those of others.
Russian society does need “a free discussion” of ideas and “does not need censorship,” the appeal says. Indeed, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau in this case as in others argues that it is a good thing to have arguments “between liberals and conservatives, between ‘backers of the state’ and radical democrats, and among representatives of the most varied political views.”
“The most varied,” the Bureau says, “but not all. For any society, in order to preserve itself should defend itself from the ideas of racism, racism, and hatred of everything human. Especially” under conditions like those in contemporary Russia where such ideas are “directly” applied in the streets.
Giving national radicals air time, as Radio Liberty and Ekho Moskvy have in recent months, “gives birth not only to phobias and fears about the future but pushes people toward anti-social actions” -- including the kind of racist violence than in the Russian Federation alone has claimed “no more than 80” lives.
Why then, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau asks, “are democratic radio stations inviting guests who are anything but democratically inclined guests” to appeal on their programs.” There is one obvious “cause” – “a striving to increase the ratings of [these] radio stations.”
And in fact, the appeal suggests, including such radicals does attract an audience, especially since the radicals speak in the kind of simplified sound-bite language that provides apparently simple answers to what are inherently complicated social and political problems, thus further compromising political discourse in Russia.
But these stations have “a civic responsibility” to promote just the reverse, to provide people with “objective information, make them more humane, wiser and better.” Indeed, “the single chance for the development of the democratic movement in Russia is again the struggle with xenophobia and the imposition of controls on chauvinist and racist attitudes.”
Unfortunately, the appeal concludes, what is taking place now “is just the reverse: Each day we hear about murders and beatings of those whose skin is a different color, who follow a different faith, or who have different political views.” In that environment, “liberal media outlets have a responsibility,” which, if they do not exercise it, could lead to their own destruction.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Medvedev Has Not Created His Own Team, Specialist on Elites Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 7 – Despite the image he has as a new face who has brought youth and business acumen into the Kremlin, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has not so far succeeded in appointing his own team and thus has not put himself in a position to depart from that of his predecessor Vladimir Putin as some have suggested.
At a press conference yesterday, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who heads the elite studies program at the Moscow Institute of Sociology, said that during his first 100 days in office, Medvedev has made no discernable steps in the direction of his own team and thus giving him a chance to act independently of Putin (www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=164782).
Kryshtanovskaya said that she was particularly struck by two trends which fly in the face of the assumptions many commentators are making. On the one hand, the average age of those working in the presidential administration and Security Council has risen since Medvedev became president, exactly the reverse of what most writers imply.
And on the other, she pointed out, the share of those in those two institutions with close ties to business has actually fallen over the same period, despite the widespread and generally unquestioned assumption that Medvedev more than Putin reflects the interests of the country’s business community.
Kryshtanovskaya’s comments yesterday call attention to her broader discussion of the evolution of the Russian political elite under Putin. In remarks delivered at the end of May and posted online a week ago, she described what the rise of those with intelligence backgrounds during Putin’s time in office (www.polit.ru/lectures/2008/07/31/rus_elita.html).
Most analysts, she suggested, point to the emergence of this group under Putin, himself a former KGB officer, and then discuss ideological trends within it – liberals and reformers, on one side of the fence, and conservatives and nationalists, on the other – with little reference to the foundations of such views.
According to the Moscow scholar, officers in the intelligence community, broadly defined to include many such as the military whom others would classify only as siloviki, divide into two fundamental groups: intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers, each group of which has unique features but both of which share many values.
Intelligence officers, Kryshtanovskaya argued, have served abroad and recognize the gap between where Russia is and where they would like it to go. They thus favor reforms in order to get their country up to speed, a policy preference that routinely leads observers to classify them as liberals or reformers.
Counterintelligence officers – and many military commanders fall into this category – have never served outside their own country and see the outside world not as a model for emulation but rather as a continuing source of threats which they must counter. They thus typically support policy positions others label as conservative.
But if the two differ in this way, Kryshtanovskaya said, they share three important communalities which link them together. First, both groups see themselves as uniquely responsible for the protection of the national interests of their country and view others not only as secondary in this regard but as potential obstacles.
Second, Kryshtanovskaya added, both groups among the intelligence community need their country to have a clearly defined enemy, one that simultaneously provides a focus for their activities and a justification for their particular role as the savior of their country in the face of never-ending threats to its existence.
And third, she suggested, both groups believe that they must use cover and duplicitous methods in order to achieve their ends, misleading their opponents and even their supporters in the name of a higher goals.
Under Putin, the intelligence group triumphed over the counterintelligence one, Kryshtanovskaya argued, a situation that has not changed under Medvedev and one that she suggests provides a useful matrix for understanding Russian politics, both what is said and what is done, long into the future.
Vienna, August 7 – Despite the image he has as a new face who has brought youth and business acumen into the Kremlin, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has not so far succeeded in appointing his own team and thus has not put himself in a position to depart from that of his predecessor Vladimir Putin as some have suggested.
At a press conference yesterday, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who heads the elite studies program at the Moscow Institute of Sociology, said that during his first 100 days in office, Medvedev has made no discernable steps in the direction of his own team and thus giving him a chance to act independently of Putin (www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=164782).
Kryshtanovskaya said that she was particularly struck by two trends which fly in the face of the assumptions many commentators are making. On the one hand, the average age of those working in the presidential administration and Security Council has risen since Medvedev became president, exactly the reverse of what most writers imply.
And on the other, she pointed out, the share of those in those two institutions with close ties to business has actually fallen over the same period, despite the widespread and generally unquestioned assumption that Medvedev more than Putin reflects the interests of the country’s business community.
Kryshtanovskaya’s comments yesterday call attention to her broader discussion of the evolution of the Russian political elite under Putin. In remarks delivered at the end of May and posted online a week ago, she described what the rise of those with intelligence backgrounds during Putin’s time in office (www.polit.ru/lectures/2008/07/31/rus_elita.html).
Most analysts, she suggested, point to the emergence of this group under Putin, himself a former KGB officer, and then discuss ideological trends within it – liberals and reformers, on one side of the fence, and conservatives and nationalists, on the other – with little reference to the foundations of such views.
According to the Moscow scholar, officers in the intelligence community, broadly defined to include many such as the military whom others would classify only as siloviki, divide into two fundamental groups: intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers, each group of which has unique features but both of which share many values.
Intelligence officers, Kryshtanovskaya argued, have served abroad and recognize the gap between where Russia is and where they would like it to go. They thus favor reforms in order to get their country up to speed, a policy preference that routinely leads observers to classify them as liberals or reformers.
Counterintelligence officers – and many military commanders fall into this category – have never served outside their own country and see the outside world not as a model for emulation but rather as a continuing source of threats which they must counter. They thus typically support policy positions others label as conservative.
But if the two differ in this way, Kryshtanovskaya said, they share three important communalities which link them together. First, both groups see themselves as uniquely responsible for the protection of the national interests of their country and view others not only as secondary in this regard but as potential obstacles.
Second, Kryshtanovskaya added, both groups among the intelligence community need their country to have a clearly defined enemy, one that simultaneously provides a focus for their activities and a justification for their particular role as the savior of their country in the face of never-ending threats to its existence.
And third, she suggested, both groups believe that they must use cover and duplicitous methods in order to achieve their ends, misleading their opponents and even their supporters in the name of a higher goals.
Under Putin, the intelligence group triumphed over the counterintelligence one, Kryshtanovskaya argued, a situation that has not changed under Medvedev and one that she suggests provides a useful matrix for understanding Russian politics, both what is said and what is done, long into the future.
Window on Eurasia: If Lenin Had Not Died But Become a Muslim – a Bashkir Fantasy
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 7 – A Bashkir artist has prepared a photo gallery on the proposition that “Lenin is more living than all the living.” Rinat Voligamsi has imaged what would have happened had the Soviet leader not died in 1924 but increase left politics and lived the remainder of his life as a Muslim.
In Voligamsi’s imaginative version as reported by Interfax-Religion today, such a “renewed Lenin” whose family traced its roots to Bashkortostan would have joined forces with his businessman brother Sergei, made the haj to Mecca and even written a book entitled “Islam as the Last Hope of the Revolution” (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=25941).
In the words of Interfax, Voligamsi’s fantasy did not end with that, however. During World War II, the artist imagined, the Muslim Lenin hid out in Latin America, consulted with Castro and Trotsky on various political, social and moral questions, and then ended his life in Zurich as an antiques dealer.
The Bashkir artist used “hundreds” of old photographs which he combined with the help of Photoshop in order to create what he describes as “real fantasies” in the latest if not the last of the many ways various peoples in the former Soviet empire have sought to make Lenin visually at least uniquely their own.
UPDATE: Some of the photographs of Lenin as a Muslim are available online at tabloid.vlasti.net/news/259757.
Vienna, August 7 – A Bashkir artist has prepared a photo gallery on the proposition that “Lenin is more living than all the living.” Rinat Voligamsi has imaged what would have happened had the Soviet leader not died in 1924 but increase left politics and lived the remainder of his life as a Muslim.
In Voligamsi’s imaginative version as reported by Interfax-Religion today, such a “renewed Lenin” whose family traced its roots to Bashkortostan would have joined forces with his businessman brother Sergei, made the haj to Mecca and even written a book entitled “Islam as the Last Hope of the Revolution” (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=25941).
In the words of Interfax, Voligamsi’s fantasy did not end with that, however. During World War II, the artist imagined, the Muslim Lenin hid out in Latin America, consulted with Castro and Trotsky on various political, social and moral questions, and then ended his life in Zurich as an antiques dealer.
The Bashkir artist used “hundreds” of old photographs which he combined with the help of Photoshop in order to create what he describes as “real fantasies” in the latest if not the last of the many ways various peoples in the former Soviet empire have sought to make Lenin visually at least uniquely their own.
UPDATE: Some of the photographs of Lenin as a Muslim are available online at tabloid.vlasti.net/news/259757.
Window on Eurasia: Post-Soviet States Falsify Statistics on Ethnicity for Political Purposes
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 6 – Officials in Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation are falsifying data on the ethnic composition of the populations of those two countries, in the first case to suggest that the share of ethnic Russians has fallen more than it has and in the second to suggest that both the size of the population and the share of ethnic Russians in it have not fallen as far.
Because ethnic composition figures are among the most politically sensitive and febrile data sets in these countries, governments there long have had motive and opportunity to manipulate them, actions that both scholars in the region and more broadly have documented in one way or another.
But the last week has featured the appearance of two articles, one on the number of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan and the second on the number of ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation, which together may contribute to a broader public discussion of an issue officialdom has been reluctant to raise.
In an article on the Russians.kz site, Igor Kurbatov recalls that many Russians in the early 1990s recognized that Kazakh officials were manipulating census data to boost the number of Kazakhs relative to ethnic Russians not only to legitimate themselves but to justify a division of the Soviet spoils (www.russians.kz/russians/992248-zhivye-i-mjortvye-russkie-dushi.html).
But for most of the intervening period, possible Kazakh census manipulations attracted relatively little attention, although recently, Kurbatov continues, “there is good reason to again turn to this theme,” not only for what it says about conditions on the ground but also about the image Astana seeks to project.
According to the 1998 Kazakhstan census, ethnic Kazakhs formed 51.8 percent of that country’s population, with ethnic Russians forming 31.4 percent, and the remainder scattered. But according to Kazakhstan figures for 2006, the share of ethnic Kazakhs had risen to 58.6 percent while that of ethnic Russians had fallen further to 26.1 percent.
For those figures to be true, Kurbatov says, the number of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan would have had to decline by one million between 1999 and 2005, a number that other demographic data do not support. For that period, there were 155,448 more deaths than births among Russians and outmigration equaled 447,850.
That means that the ethnic Russian population for this period in fact declined about 600,000, raising the question of how the Kazakhs calculated it at 1,000,000 – almost 400,000 more – and it strongly suggests that Kazakhstan officials have simply falsified the numbers in order to reduce the ethnic Russian share of their country’s population.
Meanwhile, in a “Russkiy bazaar” article entitled “How Can One Make a Taji9k into a Russian?” Sergei Baimukhametov suggests that some Russian officials are engaging in similar kinds of falsification, albeit for somewhat different purposes and in ways that are unlikely to remain hidden for long (www.russian-bazaar.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=13049).
In order to conceal both the impact immigration is having on the ethnic mix of the declining population of the Russian Federation and the failure of ethnic Russians to “return home” as compatriots, some Russian officials are substituting the wish for the result and implying that those counted as “compatriots” are more Slavic than is in fact the case.
The problem, Baimukhametov argues, arises because of the ethnic membership of the immigrants. “No one anywhere wants to talk about this aloud,” lest such discussions spark political controversies. But in fact, Russian legislation includes “a playing at definitions” that is creating a serious statistical and ultimately political problem.
According to the “Russkiy bazaar” writer, existing law begins to defining “compatriot abroad” as “persons who had been citizens of the USSR,” but then other portions of the law and the instructions officials have been given to implement it narrow that term to include “only ethnic Russians of the former Soviet republics or a bit more broadly members of Slavic groups.”
For Russian reporting on the ethnic composition of the population to be both accurate and reliable, then Moscow will have to modify existing law to specify that the term “compatriots” includes “all non-Russians and Russians.” But, asks Baimukhametov rhetorically, “will Tajik, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, or Moldovan gastarbeiters be included in the ranks of [non-ethnic] Russians?”
That will be difficult for them and difficult for ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation itself. If the ten to fifteen million migrants were to be naturalized in this way, then the percentage of genuinely ethnic Russians in the country would be much lower than Moscow and ethnic Russians want.
And Baimukhametov says, experts now insist that “for the foreseeable future, such new arrivals will remain the chief source of labor reserves” and that “one must design a migration policy on the basis of this rather than out of attempts to artificially correct the nationality composition” of the Russian Federation.
Vienna, August 6 – Officials in Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation are falsifying data on the ethnic composition of the populations of those two countries, in the first case to suggest that the share of ethnic Russians has fallen more than it has and in the second to suggest that both the size of the population and the share of ethnic Russians in it have not fallen as far.
Because ethnic composition figures are among the most politically sensitive and febrile data sets in these countries, governments there long have had motive and opportunity to manipulate them, actions that both scholars in the region and more broadly have documented in one way or another.
But the last week has featured the appearance of two articles, one on the number of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan and the second on the number of ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation, which together may contribute to a broader public discussion of an issue officialdom has been reluctant to raise.
In an article on the Russians.kz site, Igor Kurbatov recalls that many Russians in the early 1990s recognized that Kazakh officials were manipulating census data to boost the number of Kazakhs relative to ethnic Russians not only to legitimate themselves but to justify a division of the Soviet spoils (www.russians.kz/russians/992248-zhivye-i-mjortvye-russkie-dushi.html).
But for most of the intervening period, possible Kazakh census manipulations attracted relatively little attention, although recently, Kurbatov continues, “there is good reason to again turn to this theme,” not only for what it says about conditions on the ground but also about the image Astana seeks to project.
According to the 1998 Kazakhstan census, ethnic Kazakhs formed 51.8 percent of that country’s population, with ethnic Russians forming 31.4 percent, and the remainder scattered. But according to Kazakhstan figures for 2006, the share of ethnic Kazakhs had risen to 58.6 percent while that of ethnic Russians had fallen further to 26.1 percent.
For those figures to be true, Kurbatov says, the number of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan would have had to decline by one million between 1999 and 2005, a number that other demographic data do not support. For that period, there were 155,448 more deaths than births among Russians and outmigration equaled 447,850.
That means that the ethnic Russian population for this period in fact declined about 600,000, raising the question of how the Kazakhs calculated it at 1,000,000 – almost 400,000 more – and it strongly suggests that Kazakhstan officials have simply falsified the numbers in order to reduce the ethnic Russian share of their country’s population.
Meanwhile, in a “Russkiy bazaar” article entitled “How Can One Make a Taji9k into a Russian?” Sergei Baimukhametov suggests that some Russian officials are engaging in similar kinds of falsification, albeit for somewhat different purposes and in ways that are unlikely to remain hidden for long (www.russian-bazaar.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=13049).
In order to conceal both the impact immigration is having on the ethnic mix of the declining population of the Russian Federation and the failure of ethnic Russians to “return home” as compatriots, some Russian officials are substituting the wish for the result and implying that those counted as “compatriots” are more Slavic than is in fact the case.
The problem, Baimukhametov argues, arises because of the ethnic membership of the immigrants. “No one anywhere wants to talk about this aloud,” lest such discussions spark political controversies. But in fact, Russian legislation includes “a playing at definitions” that is creating a serious statistical and ultimately political problem.
According to the “Russkiy bazaar” writer, existing law begins to defining “compatriot abroad” as “persons who had been citizens of the USSR,” but then other portions of the law and the instructions officials have been given to implement it narrow that term to include “only ethnic Russians of the former Soviet republics or a bit more broadly members of Slavic groups.”
For Russian reporting on the ethnic composition of the population to be both accurate and reliable, then Moscow will have to modify existing law to specify that the term “compatriots” includes “all non-Russians and Russians.” But, asks Baimukhametov rhetorically, “will Tajik, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, or Moldovan gastarbeiters be included in the ranks of [non-ethnic] Russians?”
That will be difficult for them and difficult for ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation itself. If the ten to fifteen million migrants were to be naturalized in this way, then the percentage of genuinely ethnic Russians in the country would be much lower than Moscow and ethnic Russians want.
And Baimukhametov says, experts now insist that “for the foreseeable future, such new arrivals will remain the chief source of labor reserves” and that “one must design a migration policy on the basis of this rather than out of attempts to artificially correct the nationality composition” of the Russian Federation.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Plans to Set Up CIS Support Agency Modeled on USAID
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 6 – The Russian foreign ministry is pushing for the creation of a special Agency for CIS Affairs to expand Moscow’s influence in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in much the same way that Washington uses USAID to promote American influence around the world.
The new body, as described in Russian media reporting last week, would support “friendly” non-governmental organizations as well as provide financing to “educational, humanitarian and cultural programs” for Russian-language communities in these countries (www.nr2.ru/policy/189000.html).
So far, the proposal is only “a working document,” according to NR2.ru, but most observers expect it to be approved this month because it is consistent with President Dmitry Medvedev’s May 12 directive on “Questions of the System and Structures of Federal Organs of Executive Power” which called for setting up such an agency within the foreign ministry.
If the Russian government approves, the new agency will absorb the activities and personnel of a variety of inter-agency groups, including the Center for Russian Affairs Abroad, and thus be in a position, in the words of Valery Mikhailov, deputy head of the foreign ministry’s CIS Department, to help CIS countries solve problems “under the aegis of Russia.”
Whether such a new agency will either solve the problems of Moscow’s sometimes troubled relations with Russian speakers abroad or revivify the CIS, of course, remains to be seen. But discussions of this kind – and the invocation of an American model – indicate that some Russian officials believe that Moscow has the resources needed to play this kind of game.
Vienna, August 6 – The Russian foreign ministry is pushing for the creation of a special Agency for CIS Affairs to expand Moscow’s influence in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in much the same way that Washington uses USAID to promote American influence around the world.
The new body, as described in Russian media reporting last week, would support “friendly” non-governmental organizations as well as provide financing to “educational, humanitarian and cultural programs” for Russian-language communities in these countries (www.nr2.ru/policy/189000.html).
So far, the proposal is only “a working document,” according to NR2.ru, but most observers expect it to be approved this month because it is consistent with President Dmitry Medvedev’s May 12 directive on “Questions of the System and Structures of Federal Organs of Executive Power” which called for setting up such an agency within the foreign ministry.
If the Russian government approves, the new agency will absorb the activities and personnel of a variety of inter-agency groups, including the Center for Russian Affairs Abroad, and thus be in a position, in the words of Valery Mikhailov, deputy head of the foreign ministry’s CIS Department, to help CIS countries solve problems “under the aegis of Russia.”
Whether such a new agency will either solve the problems of Moscow’s sometimes troubled relations with Russian speakers abroad or revivify the CIS, of course, remains to be seen. But discussions of this kind – and the invocation of an American model – indicate that some Russian officials believe that Moscow has the resources needed to play this kind of game.
Window on Eurasia: Russian Repression Prompts Ingush Web Editor to Seek Asylum Abroad
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 6 – Roza Mal’sagova, editor of the Ingushetiya.ru internet news portal, has fled her homeland and will seek political asylum in a West European country, the latest indication of Moscow’s rapidly expanding efforts – which parallel those of China and Belarus – to restrict independent news on the Internet.
The report, which appeared on her own site and has been picked up by other Internet portals concerned with web freedom (http://openinform.ru/news/pursuit/06.08.2008/9585), said she had taken her three minor children with her and left Russia as a result of “repressions” visited against her and the site.
It comes only three days after the Russian government announced plans to set up – or expand upon – two entities to monitor and ultimately be in a position to restrict both dot RU domain sites and access by users inside the Russian Federation to sites registered on other domains on the web (www.bit.prime-tass.ru/news/show.asp?id=59368&ct=news).
Mal’sagova’s action is the latest in the more than year-long battle between Ingushetiya.ru, and Murat Zyazikov, the head of the republic government who enjoys what appears to be the unqualified backing of Vladimir Putin, who has decorated him for his work and recently received him in Moscow.
Over that period, Zyazikov has tried a variety of measures to shut down the news portal, ranging from hacking the site itself, rerouting visitors to pornographic sites, creating an alternate site with an almost identical name, and threatening the owners, editors, and their families with physical violence.
Most recently, Zyazikov has involved Russian courts in this effort, obtaining a decision two months ago calling for the site to be shuttered, an order Moscow may not be able to enforce given that Ingushetiya.ru is now hosted not inside the Russian Federation but rather in the United States.
The latest action by Mal’sagova suggests that Zyazikov is continuing to employ physical threats against those connected with the site, actions that may in this case have been triggered by interviews given last week by former Ingush president Ruslan Aushev whom the Ingush people and Ingushetiya.ru support but who seeks to displace Zyazikov.
However that may be, Moscow’ decisions at the end of last week concerning Internet monitoring cast a further dark shadow across what remains as the only more or less free segment of the Russian media – the Internet.
Under the plan – which Moscow hid under a general plan for the extension of Internet activities to regional governments -- the Russian authorities will have two centers for monitoring the Internet, one in the Federal Security Service (FSB) which will track sites registered on the dot RU domain, and a second to be set up within the government to track Internet mass media.
It is unclear whether the main intent of the second is to break down the legal distinction between non-web media outlets which are subject to government regulation at present and media outlets which according to most legal specialists do not fall under the provisions of existing law in that regard. But that is an entirely reasonable reading of what this new action may portend.
At the very least, the flight of Mal’sagova and the creation of such structures suggests that the Internet is going to be the next and perhaps for this historical cycle last battleground over freedom of media in a country which knew little of that in the Soviet past and may again have little of it in a Putin-defined future.
Vienna, August 6 – Roza Mal’sagova, editor of the Ingushetiya.ru internet news portal, has fled her homeland and will seek political asylum in a West European country, the latest indication of Moscow’s rapidly expanding efforts – which parallel those of China and Belarus – to restrict independent news on the Internet.
The report, which appeared on her own site and has been picked up by other Internet portals concerned with web freedom (http://openinform.ru/news/pursuit/06.08.2008/9585), said she had taken her three minor children with her and left Russia as a result of “repressions” visited against her and the site.
It comes only three days after the Russian government announced plans to set up – or expand upon – two entities to monitor and ultimately be in a position to restrict both dot RU domain sites and access by users inside the Russian Federation to sites registered on other domains on the web (www.bit.prime-tass.ru/news/show.asp?id=59368&ct=news).
Mal’sagova’s action is the latest in the more than year-long battle between Ingushetiya.ru, and Murat Zyazikov, the head of the republic government who enjoys what appears to be the unqualified backing of Vladimir Putin, who has decorated him for his work and recently received him in Moscow.
Over that period, Zyazikov has tried a variety of measures to shut down the news portal, ranging from hacking the site itself, rerouting visitors to pornographic sites, creating an alternate site with an almost identical name, and threatening the owners, editors, and their families with physical violence.
Most recently, Zyazikov has involved Russian courts in this effort, obtaining a decision two months ago calling for the site to be shuttered, an order Moscow may not be able to enforce given that Ingushetiya.ru is now hosted not inside the Russian Federation but rather in the United States.
The latest action by Mal’sagova suggests that Zyazikov is continuing to employ physical threats against those connected with the site, actions that may in this case have been triggered by interviews given last week by former Ingush president Ruslan Aushev whom the Ingush people and Ingushetiya.ru support but who seeks to displace Zyazikov.
However that may be, Moscow’ decisions at the end of last week concerning Internet monitoring cast a further dark shadow across what remains as the only more or less free segment of the Russian media – the Internet.
Under the plan – which Moscow hid under a general plan for the extension of Internet activities to regional governments -- the Russian authorities will have two centers for monitoring the Internet, one in the Federal Security Service (FSB) which will track sites registered on the dot RU domain, and a second to be set up within the government to track Internet mass media.
It is unclear whether the main intent of the second is to break down the legal distinction between non-web media outlets which are subject to government regulation at present and media outlets which according to most legal specialists do not fall under the provisions of existing law in that regard. But that is an entirely reasonable reading of what this new action may portend.
At the very least, the flight of Mal’sagova and the creation of such structures suggests that the Internet is going to be the next and perhaps for this historical cycle last battleground over freedom of media in a country which knew little of that in the Soviet past and may again have little of it in a Putin-defined future.
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