[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 72 (Thursday, May 3, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H4475-H4482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cohen). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, today is World Press Freedom Day, a day that
the international community has set aside to honor the work and
sacrifice of journalists around the world.
World Press Freedom Day was first designated by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization in 1991 as an
occasion to pay tribute to journalists and to reflect upon the role of
the media in general in advancing fundamental human rights as codified
in international law, regional conventions and national constitutions.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is the foundation of
the postwar human rights movement, states the principle broadly in
article 19. ``Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers.'' It may not be as
eloquent as our first amendment, but its effect is the same.
For Americans, this day should spur us to consider the role that
journalists play in our society and to ponder what our Nation would be
like if this cornerstone of our liberty were to be curtailed.
Although most Americans take the concept of a free press for granted,
I believe that an unfettered press is vital to America's national
security and to our democracy here at home.
A year ago today, my colleague from Indiana, Mr. Spence, and Senators
Chris Dodd and Richard Lugar joined me in launching a new bipartisan,
bicameral caucus aimed at advancing press freedom around the world. The
Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press creates a forum where the
United States Congress can work to combat and condemn media censorship
and the persecution of journalists around the world. The launch of this
new caucus sends a strong message that Congress will defend democratic
values and human rights wherever they are threatened.
In launching the caucus, we were encouraged by the wide range of
organizations and individuals, such as Reporters Without Borders,
Freedom House, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Musa Klebnikov,
the widow of Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes Russia, who was shot
to death outside of his offices 2 years ago, and the legendary Walter
Cronkite, all of whom enthusiastically endorsed our effort.
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Freedom of the press is so central to our democracy that the Framers
enshrined it in the first amendment of our Constitution. At the time,
there was little in the way of journalist ethics, and newspapers were
filled with scurrilous allegations leveled at public figures. Even so,
our Founders understood its importance to advancing the new Nation's
experiment in democracy.
In the Virginia Report of 1799-1800, touching the alien and sedition
laws, James Madison wrote that, ``Some degree of abuse is inseparable
from the proper use of everything, and in no instance is this more true
than in that of the press. It has accordingly been decided by the
practice of the States that it is better to leave a few of its noxious
branches to their luxuriant growth than by pruning them away to injure
the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits. And can the wisdom of
this policy be doubted by any who reflect that to the press alone,
checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the
triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and
oppression, who reflect to the same beneficent source. The United
States owes much of the lights which conducted them to the rank of a
free and independent nation and which have improved their political
system into a shape so auspicious to their happiness.''
Throughout much of our history, Madison's argument has guided our
national attitude toward the media. Journalists have jealously guarded
their rights, and American courts have, in the main, carved out broad
protection for the press. In the United States, the press operates
almost as a fourth branch of government, the fourth estate, independent
of the other three and positioned as an agent of the American people.
From the pioneering work of journalists during the Civil War, to the
muckrakers who were committed to exposing social, economic and
political ills of industrial life in the early 20th century, to the
publication of the Pentagon Papers by The New York Times in 1971, to
the work of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
in uncovering the Watergate scandal a year later, journalists have
performed a crucial role as the watchdogs of our freedom.
But in order for freedom of the press to do its work properly, it
must be unfettered, and journalists must be able to do their work
without fear of retribution. Information is power, which is precisely
why governments, many of them, attempt to control the press to suppress
opposition and to preempt dissent. Far too often, reporters and editors
who seek to demand reform, accountability and greater transparency find
that their livelihoods and even their very lives are in danger. The
censorship, intimidation, imprisonment and murder of these journalists
violate not only their personal liberty, but also the rights of those
who are denied access to these ideas and information.
The United States, as the world's oldest democracy and the greatest
champion of free expression, has a special obligation to defend the
rights of journalists wherever and whenever they are threatened. A free
press is one of the most powerful forces for advancing democracy, human
rights and economic development. So our commitment to these larger
objectives requires active engagement in the protection and the
promotion of this freedom.
These are difficult and dangerous days for reporters around the
world. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists, 56 journalists were killed in the line of duty in 2006,
most of whom were murdered to silence or punish them. The toll was 9
more than the 47 journalists killed in 2005, just the year before, and
well above average for the last 2 decades of reporting. Another 30
reporters were killed, but law enforcement authorities cannot confirm
that their deaths were the result of their work.
Outright murder is not the only tool that the authorities use to
silence reporters. As of December 1, 2006, 134 journalists were
imprisoned around the world as a consequence of their work. Of these,
more than 100 were held by only five countries: China, Cuba, Eritrea,
Ethiopia, and Burma.
These countries which imprison journalists for straying beyond the
bounds of official censorship are not the most dangerous for
journalists, however. Since 1992, more journalists have been killed in
Iraq, Algeria, Russia, Colombia and the Philippines than anywhere else.
We are all familiar with the dangers inherent in covering war and
insurgencies, and many of those killed in Iraq, Algeria and Colombia
have died covering conflicts in these countries. In the Philippines,
the murder of journalists has been part of a larger campaign against
perceived left-wing activists.
But it is Russia, where more than 20 journalists have been murdered
in 6 years since Vladimir Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin, that we wish
to address this evening.
All alone among the top five countries where journalists are
murdered, the deaths of journalists in Russia seem to be part of a
concerted effort to silence the few remaining journalists who refuse to
tow the Kremlin line. China, Cuba and others have been rightly
condemned for imprisoning journalists who raised the ire of their
governments. Moscow seems to have taken a different tack. Instead of
censoring jailing journalists it doesn't like, the Kremlin seems to
look the other way when they turn up dead.
There is no direct evidence tying the Putin government to the murder
of journalists in Russia, but there is a wealth of circumstantial
evidence pointing to at least acquiescence in the death of journalists.
The number of journalists killed, the circumstances of their deaths,
the stories they were working on, and perhaps most telling, the fact
that not one of the crimes has been successfully prosecuted involving
the murder of these journalists in Russia, is indicative of a
deliberate decision not to dig too deeply into these murders.
Others hint at something darker. In an editorial the Washington Post
recently stated, ``The instances of violence against journalists in Mr.
Putin's Russia and of the brutal elimination of his critics both at
home and abroad have become so common that it is impossible to explain
them all as coincidences.''
The evolution of Russian journalism from its dismal Soviet past to
its current role as the Kremlin's sycophant is distressing. During the
latter part of the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev loosened many of the Soviet
era's restrictions on the press and the Soviet media became an
important player in Gorbachev's policy of Glasnost.
Under Gorbachev, journalists began to explore the full range of
issues that had remained hidden for so long by the Soviet Government,
the Afghan war, the gulags, the miserable performance of the Soviet
economy and the endemic corruption of Soviet society were laid bare.
There is little doubt that the Soviet media's revelations were a
catalyst in the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
In the immediate post-Soviet era, the Russian press foundered as the
economy collapsed, but the first Chechen war, which lasted from 1994 to
1996, revitalized Russian journalism. Television was especially
powerful, and its coverage of the war turned millions of Russians
against the conflict. In many respects, this period was the high
watermark for an independent press in Russia.
But even as NTV and other television outlets helped to shape domestic
opposition to the Chechen war, Russian journalism was shedding its
independence. As Michael Specter wrote in the New Yorker about this
period in Russia, ``The moral tone of the journalist's world began to
shift from idealistic to mercenary. The practice of writing biased news
articles for money became routine, even at the best papers. Restaurant
owners, businessmen and public officials knew that, for the right
price, it would bring them favorable coverage almost anywhere.''
This distortion of the journalistic creed of objectivity and
neutrality was exacerbated in 1996 when President Yeltsin, whose
support and opinion polls had fallen into the low single digits, faced
off against Communist Gennady Zyuganov in the Russian presidential
election. Knowing that without third-party intervention Yeltsin was
doomed and that Zyuganov would reimpose control over the media,
Russia's media elite intervened.
Over the course of the campaign, NTV and other media outlets
collectively swayed Russian public opinion and Yeltsin ended up
winning. But the
[[Page H4477]]
damage was done. As a former anchor for NTV told the New Yorker's
Michael Specter, the election ``put a poisoned seed into the soil, and
even if we did not see why, the authorities understood at once mass
media could very easily be manipulated to achieve any goal. Whether the
Kremlin needed to raise the rating of a president or bring down an
opponent or conduct an operation to destroy a businessman, the media
could do the job.''
{time} 1715
Once the Kremlin understood it could use journalists as instruments
of its will and saw that journalists would go along, everything that
happened in the Putin era was, sadly, quite logical.
The ascension of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency cemented
the link between Russia's rulers and the press. Even without government
censorship, the press has become a passive booster of the president's
efforts to centralize authority and to restore Russia to its former
status as a great power. To that end, the Russian media has ignored the
corruption and cronyism that has become institutionalized in Russia
since the Yeltsin period, and has largely been uncritical of the
prosecution of the second Chechnyan war which has raged for nearly 8
years.
But even as the vast majority of their colleagues censor themselves
and follow the Kremlin line, a few brave journalists have dared to
investigate, to question, and criticize. Journalistic independence in
Russia is dangerous. And in a few minutes we will introduce you to some
of the journalists whose brave voices have been stilled.
When my colleague arrives back on the floor, Mike Pence, I will
introduce him. He has been a leading voice in the House on human rights
and serves as the other co-chair of our Congressional Caucus For
Freedom of the Press.
But this evening I will start in highlighting the Russian journalists
who have lost their lives by talking about Ivan Safronov, who died in
early March of this year after falling from a fifth floor stairwell
window in his apartment building in Moscow.
He was a correspondent at Kommersant, and is the most recent
journalist in Russia to die under a cloud of suspicion. Russian
officials quickly called his death a suicide. However, according to
colleagues of his at Kommersant, he had a very happy family life and
had no motive to commit suicide. It was not until Kommersant and some
other news media suggested foul play that the authorities agreed to
investigate the circumstances of Mr. Safronov's death.
According to his editors, Mr. Safronov, a military affairs writer,
was working on a story about Russian plans to sell weapons to Iran and
Syria via Belarus. Mr. Safronov had been a colonel in the Russia Space
Forces prior to reporting for Kommersant. He frequently angered
authorities with his critical reporting and was repeatedly questioned
by Federal authorities which suspected him of divulging state secrets.
One such report that Mr. Safronov filed that angered officials revealed
the third consecutive launch failure of a new Bulava intercontinental
ballistic missile. This had been a pet project of President Putin's
which was supposed to show the world Russia's nuclear strength.
Strangely enough, no charges were ever brought up against Mr.
Safronov. He was well aware that he was reporting on a sensitive issue
and was very careful in his work always to have a way to prove he was
not divulging state secrets. He was known for making meticulous notes
and conducting thorough research so he could always prove he got his
information from known sources.
It would seem that sadly Mr. Safronov's reporting was too good and
the only way to silence him was by eliminating him. Mr. Safronov is not
on either of the lists of journalists that we have tonight to highlight
because his death is so recent. But his tragic death is another example
of the lack of progress being made to protect journalists in Russia.
Before I begin highlighting 13 of the journalists on the committee to
protect journalists of the most recently murdered journalists in
Russia, I would like to introduce my colleague from Indiana, Mike
Pence, who is one of the co-chairs of the caucus and does a superb job
advocating for the rights of the media.
Mr. PENCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I am profoundly grateful that while I have the privilege of co-
chairing the Congressional Caucus for Protection of the Press, I want
to acknowledge you have been the driving force behind this caucus. You
recruited me to participation a year ago and I am grateful for this
opportunity to have a reunion with you publicly on the House floor. The
gentleman from California is a Member I deeply admire, and am honored
to be associated with, as well as our Senate colleagues, Senator Chris
Dodd and Senator Richard Lugar from my home State.
I would reflect at the outset about World Press Freedom Day which was
the very day that we launched the Congressional Caucus For Freedom of
the Press back on May 3, 2006, the profound importance of the freedom
of the press and my belief that the United States of America ought to
be a beacon of freedom for the world. We ought to inspire, we ought to
articulate, we ought to use our freedom, as the gentleman from
California is doing today in this Special Order, to highlight the
absence of freedom in other parts of the globe. I am greatly enthused
by his leadership, Mr. Speaker, and by the opportunity today.
A few thoughts on freedom of the press. I would offer where there is
no freedom of the press, there is no freedom. If America is to be a
beacon of hope for the world, we must hold high the idea of a free and
independent press. We must advance it abroad and we must defend it at
home.
A few quotes about the centrality of freedom of the press. As the
gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) suggested, sometimes we don't
quite understand how central the freedom of the press is to the success
of the American experiment. But our Founders enshrined the freedom of
the press in the first amendment because they understood, as people who
believed in limited government, that the only check on government power
in real-time is a free and independent press.
Our Founders did not include freedom of the press in the first
amendment because they got good press, they included it there because
they believed in limited government and they believed in the survival
of liberty, and they understood the role that the press plays in our
society and as we seek to promote it through this caucus in other
societies. The press is that agency of progress, that agency of
accountability that makes freedom possible and sustains freedom.
A few thoughts from our Founders before I yield back to our effort to
highlight what has been a train of frightening contract-style killings
taking place in Russia that we seek to highlight today. Thomas
Jefferson would say, ``Our liberty,'' and I would add parenthetically,
anyone else's liberty, ``Our liberty cannot be guarded but by freedom
of the press, nor that limited without danger of losing it.''
Roger McCormick, the founder of the Chicago Tribune, spoke words that
are chiseled on the wall of that newspaper to this day, and I wrote
them down when I was visiting the paper a few years ago, about the
goal, the mission of a newspaper. He said, ``The newspaper is an
institution developed by modern civilization to present the news of the
day, to foster commerce and industry, to inform and lead public
opinion, and to furnish that check upon government which no
Constitution has ever been able to provide.''
Benjamin Rush, one of our Founding Fathers, would say, ``Newspapers
are the sentinels of the liberties of the country.''
James Madison would say, ``To the press alone checkered as it is with
abuses, the world is indebted for all of the triumphs which have by
gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.''
And Daniel Webster would say, ``The entire and absolute freedom of
the press is essential to the preservation of government on the basis
of a free Constitution.''
These great minds, these great voices of liberty, some of whom faces
are chiseled into the wall of this great room, are what inspired the
formation of the Congressional Caucus for the Freedom of the Press, and
it inspires me to be able to stand with my co-chair, with the founder
of this caucus, Congressman Schiff, to now use this platform,
[[Page H4478]]
this stage, this blue and gold and red carpet to hold up the ideal of
the freedom of the press, and in the exercise of our own freedom to
challenge those and expose those places in the world where the freedom
of the press is under siege.
As I prepare to yield back to the gentleman, I would say that the
rising tide of violence against journalists in Russia since the advent
of the presidency of Mr. Putin is deeply troubling and ought to be
troubling to anyone who cherishes the notion of a free and independent
press.
As we saw the wall fall in 1991, we all hoped that the daylight of
liberty was rushing in with perestroika and the changes and the
democracy movement, but it seems that Boris Yeltsin's recent passing
may be a metaphor for Russia today. The Boris Yeltsin who stood against
Soviet totalitarianism, stood for democracy in his country, passed into
history just a matter of weeks ago, and it seems as I think the
gentleman will articulate in a powerful and compelling way today, that
as he passes into history, we fear that this experiment in freedom and
democracy, and particularly a free press in Russia, is passing into
history as well. We do not conclude that, we fear it.
I am honored to be able to join my colleague and participate as he
yields time to telling some of the stories of these journalists who
have paid the price for doing liberty's work in that country of Russia.
So again, I commend the gentleman and give him whole cloth credit for
founding the Congressional Caucus For Freedom of the Press. I am
honored to stand with him and honored to call him a friend.
Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman for your generosity and commitment.
I know my colleague probably feels as I do that there is many a morning
I get up and read the newspaper, seeing my own name in it, and not feel
that this is the day I want to champion a free press. That does happen
from time to time. But notwithstanding those occasional morning papers,
we almost always recognize the importance of the institution. That is
why we are here tonight.
When we have gotten together in the past, it is to highlight
journalists who have been imprisoned or murdered or killers who have
gone with impunity around the world. But because of the magnitude of
the problem in Russia, because of the prevalence and the pernicious
nature of what is going on in Russia, we felt that we needed to
spotlight one country tonight and devote the entire hour to Russia.
Let me start by highlighting some of the 13 journalists in Russia who
have been killed contract-style since President Putin was elected
president in 2000.
This list of journalists was compiled by the caucus to protect
journalists. These 13 journalists are all believed to have been
deliberately killed due to their work as journalists. Their names and
the dates they were killed and the media outlets they worked for are
listed on some of the graphics that we have here tonight, and these are
the faces of the 13 slain journalists.
It is one thing when we talk about the numbers of journalists that
have been murdered this year and the number that were murdered last
year or the number killed in Russia alone over the last several years.
Those are only numbers; but when we look at this chart and we look at
these journalists and we realize that these were each promising lives,
these were each important lives, these were real people doing a
courageous job who are no longer among us, we can understand the
enormity of the crime that is going on.
The first of the journalists on the committee's list and the second
most recent journalist in Russia to be murdered, probably the most
well-known internationally is Anna Politkovskaya. Her portrait is
behind me. Anna was found shot to death in her Moscow home on October 7
of last year in a murder that garnered worldwide condemnation.
{time} 1730
Her death sparked protests from governments around the world, the
European Union, and civil society groups concerned with freedom of the
press.
Anna was a courageous and world-renowned writer for the paper Novaya
Gazeta. For many years she had campaigned against the war in Chechnya,
corruption, and shrinking freedoms throughout the Russian Federation.
Anna was a fearless journalist committed to reporting the truth about
the conflict in Chechnya, which she called ``a small corner of hell.''
In 7 years covering the second Chechen war, Anna's reporting
repeatedly drew the wrath of Russian authorities. For simply reporting
the truth about the conflict, she was threatened, jailed, forced into
exile, and even poisoned. Even that was not enough to silence her.
In an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists,
Politkovskaya noted the government's obstruction and harassment of
journalists trying to cover the Chechen conflict. She pointed out the
difficulty of covering the 2004 hostage crisis in the North Ossetian
town of Beslan that left 334 civilians dead. She said, ``There is so
much more to write about Beslan, but it gets more and more difficult
when all the journalists who write are forced to leave.''
Apparently the authorities were not content with simply forcing
Politkovskaya to leave. She was poisoned on her way to cover the Beslan
crisis. After drinking tea on a flight to the region, she became
seriously ill and was hospitalized, but the toxin was never identified
because the medical staff was instructed to destroy her blood tests.
Politkovskaya was threatened and attacked numerous times in
retaliation for her work. In February 2001, security agents detained
her in the Vedeno district in Chechnya, accusing her of entering
Chechnya without accreditation. She was kept in a pit for three days
without food or water, while a military officer threatened to shoot
her. Seven months later, she received death threats from a military
officer accused of crimes against civilians. She was forced to flee to
Vienna after the officer sent an e-mail to Novaya Gazeta promising that
he would seek revenge.
When Politkovskaya covertly visited Chechnya in 2002 to investigate
new allegations of human rights abuses, security officers arrested her,
kept her overnight at a military base, and threatened her. In October
of that year, Politkovskaya served as a mediator between armed Chechen
fighters and Russian forces during a hostage standoff in a central
Moscow theater. Two days into the crisis, with the Kremlin restricting
media coverage, Russian forces gassed the theater and 129 hostages
died. Politkovskaya delivered some of the most compelling accounts of
that tragedy.
Just prior to her murder, Anna was working on an article, accompanied
by photos, about torture in Chechnya. It was due to be published days
after she was killed. Her article, however, never arrived at the
newspaper.
In her last book, Russia Under Putin, which was published this year
in France, she not only criticized atrocities in Chechnya but also
corruption and human rights violations in Russia.
Anna was internationally acclaimed for her courage and her
professionalism, and now you can see why. She was named by the
Committee to Protect Journalists as one of the world's top press
freedom figures of the past 25 years in the fall 2006 edition of its
magazine, Dangerous Assignments.
Anna may have been killed, but her memory continues to live on.
Today, Anna was named this year's winner of the prestigious 2007
UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. This is the first time
the honor has been awarded posthumously in its 10-year history.
While the Russian Government claims that many leads have been
examined, so far the investigation has stalled, and no charges have
been filed, a sadly familiar tale when a journalist is murdered in
Russia.
This is the face of a woman of great courage, who gave her life so
that the truth could come out and be told, and tonight we honor her
memory and we point to her example.
I will turn now to Mr. Pence to highlight our next journalist.
Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, also pictured on our poster, and I believe
the gentleman from California could point to, in the upper left corner
of the poster should be the image of Magomedzagid Varisov.
At around 9:00 p.m. on June 28, 2005, in the city of Makhachkala,
assailants armed with machine guns opened fire
[[Page H4479]]
on Magomedzagid Varisov's sedan as he drove home with his wife. Varisov
sustained multiple bullet wounds and died at the scene. The likely
motive for Varisov's assassination was his work as a journalist and a
commentator.
For three years prior to his murder, Varisov wrote analytical columns
for the Novoye Delo, Dagestan's largest weekly newspaper. Dagestan, a
Russian republic bordering the Caspian Sea, has been the scene of low-
level political violence and unrest driven by a separatist rebellion
since 2000. Varisov was often critical of the Dagestan separatists, and
his expertise on the Northern Caucuses made him a highly sought after
resource for reporters and researchers. As a journalist and a pundit,
Varisov wrote that the opposition was trying to destabilize the
republic and topple the regional government and authored investigative
pieces into terrorism and organized crime in the region.
In an issue of Novoye Delo just before his death, Varisov examined
Russian Army operations in the Chechen border town of Borozdinovskaya
in which one person was killed and 11 others were reported missing.
Ethnic Avars, fearing for their lives, left Borozdinovskaya by the
hundreds and crossed into neighboring Dagestan. Varisov criticized
Chechen authorities in his article for failing to protect the safety of
Borozdinovskaya residents and appealed to Dagestan authorities to do
right by them.
For over a year, Varisov had spoken of threats against him and had
written about those threats in articles for Novoye Delo. Varisov
complained that unknown individuals were following him, and he sought
protection from Makhachkala law enforcement authorities. No protection
came, and not long after, Varisov was gunned down.
In a tale that has become all too common in Russia, Mr. Varisov's
murder will go unsolved and unprosecuted. A raid on October 25, 2005,
killed three suspects in Mr. Varisov's death. Local prosecutors closed
their case shortly afterward, and Varisov was added to the list of
journalists whose murder will go unsolved but not forgotten.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
The next casualty in Russia's war on journalism that we will
highlight tonight is Paul Klebnikov whose photo appears here.
Paul, editor of Forbes Russia and an investigative reporter, was
gunned down as he left his Moscow office late at night on July 9, 2004.
Authorities in Moscow described the case as a contract murder and said
that he may have been killed because of his work. Paul, a U.S.
journalist of Russian descent, was 41 years old when he was shot at
least nine times from a passing car.
I had the opportunity to speak with his widow a year ago today when
Representative Pence and I launched this caucus, and I expressed my
deep sorrow to her and their three young children about this tragic
occurrence.
Paul had just started as the editor of Forbes Russia, which had
launched three months prior to his death. He had risen through the
ranks of Forbes over the prior 15 years with the magazine, starting as
a reporter covering Russian economic reform and the rise of the
country's new business elite. As a son of Russian emigrants with a long
military tradition across the political stratosphere, Paul developed a
significant expertise in Russian and Eastern European politics and
economics, which he used to report on the murky world in post-Soviet
Russia where politics and business meet.
Over the course of his career, Paul conducted hundreds of interviews
with top Russian officials and business leaders and had interviewed
nearly all of Russia's most famous businessmen, its oligarchs. His
research into the activities of these leaders led to his first book.
Further research into organized crime in Chechnya led to his second
book. In 2003, he published a groundbreaking article on corruption
among Iran's theocratic rulers.
When given the opportunity to launch Forbes Russia, Paul considered
it a great opportunity to bring the best of Western values to a Nation
struggling through a difficult political, economic and social
transition. He wrote that Russia, despite setbacks, was entering an era
where lawful, innovative, free enterprise capitalism could emerge. In
Forbes Russia's inaugural edition of April 2004, Paul published an
investigative piece that led to criticism from the Kremlin. The
following May issue included a list of Russia's 100 richest people,
noting that Moscow had more billionaires than any other city. Both
articles incited the subjects of the pieces, and Paul's tradition of
creating enemies through his reporting continued.
That history followed him to the night of his murder when Paul, after
leaving work, was shot multiple times and killed. In his dying words,
he said he couldn't imagine who wanted him dead.
A special crimes unit was assigned to investigate Paul's murder.
On September 28, 2004, Moscow police said they arrested two Chechen
men suspected in the murder. But the suspects denied involvement, and
police backed off their initial assertion. Less than two months later,
on November 18, 2004, Moscow police and the Belarusian security service
arrested three other Chechens considered suspects in the murder.
Authorities provided only limited information about the evidence they
used to link the new suspects to the crime.
Some analysts reacted to the arrests with skepticism. After the
September arrests were reported, Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-
based press freedom group Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations,
told an interviewer that authorities were pursuing a ``farfetched
Chechen trail.''
Today, Paul's case remains another unsolved murder in Russia.
Paul may have believed Russia was entering a new era, but today we
can still see that with independent reporting stifled and investigative
journalists living in fear of contract killings, post-Soviet Russia
still must close a vast gap to begin to have a free and unbiased press.
I yield to my colleague from Indiana (Mr. Pence).
Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, Aleksei Sidorov is our next victim, and his
image appears along with Valery Ivanov at the center of the poster, if
the gentleman from California would point it out. I do think, as Mr.
Schiff said earlier, it is important in this moment that we dwell on
the fact that these were people who demonstrated courage, who had loved
ones and who are now gone forever, both to the cause and to their
families and their communities, and it is imperative we look them in
the face.
On October 9, 2003, Aleksei Sidorov, the editor-in-chief of the
independent daily known as Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye, was murdered in
Togliatti, a city on the Volga River 600 miles east of Moscow.
Sidorov was the second editor-in-chief of that newspaper to be
murdered in a 2-year span. His predecessor, shown in the same
photograph, Valery Ivanov, was shot eight times at point-blank range in
April 2002.
According to local press reports, two unidentified assailants stabbed
Sidorov in the chest several times as he approached the apartment
building in Togliatti where he lived with his family. The assailants
fled after stabbing Sidorov, and the editor died in his wife's arms
after she heard his call for help and came down to the entrance of
their building.
Sidarov's paper was a newspaper known for its investigative reports
on organized crime, government corruption, and shady corporate deals in
the heavily industrialized city of Togliatti. His colleagues are
convinced the murder was in retaliation for the paper's investigative
work.
One of them told the Committee to Protect Journalists, ``All of our
investigative work was supervised by Aleksei.'' Another journalist at
the paper told CPJ that Sidorov had received unspecified threats in
retaliation for his work.
Government officials initially agreed that Sidorov's murder appeared
to be a contract killing in retaliation for his work as a journalist.
But a week after the killing, officials began offering conflicting
explanations about the motive for the murder. On October 16, the local
head of the Interior Ministry, Vladimir Shcherbakov, said Sidorov was
stabbed after refusing to give a stranger a sip of some vodka he had
supposedly been drinking, the independent Moscow daily Gazeta reported.
That same day, Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov said the
[[Page H4480]]
murder was related to ``the journalist's professional activity,'' the
independent Moscow daily Kommersant reported. But the next day, he
switched his story, calling the murder, ``an act of hooliganism,'' the
ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
{time} 1745
According to local news reports, Deputy Prosecutor General Yevgeny
Novozhylov said that an intoxicated welder from one of the local
factories, Yevgeny Maininger, stumbled upon Sidorov that evening and
murdered him after a brief argument. The local police detained
Maininger on October 12 and charged him with murder after he confessed
to the killing.
Sidorov's family and journalists at the newspaper Tolyatinskoye
Obozreniye were skeptical that the authorities had found the true
killer. A year later, a Russian district court judge confirmed their
doubts by acquitting the man.
On October 11, 2004, Judge Andrei Kirillov found that the 29 year-old
alleged assailant was not involved in Sidorov's murder and said the
prosecution's case was untenable, according to the independent Moscow
daily known as Kommersant. Sidorov's family father said the family was
pleased that the acquittal ended what they considered to be a flawed
investigation. ``The investigation, instead of seeking out the real
killer of my son, tried to dump everything on this innocent person,''
Mr. Sidorov's father, said. ``We will do everything possible to ensure
the [authorities] start a normal investigation.''
Karen Nersisian, the defense lawyer representing the Sidorov family,
said, he will work to have the case transferred to a higher court in
Moscow, according to local press reports.
More than 3 years later, Sidorov's killer has not been identified.
Mr. SCHIFF. It is a sad commentary on the number of journalists that
have been murdered in Russia, that in an hour we will not have time to
discuss all of them.
There are several journalists we may not be able to fully describe
this evening who are featured on our chart. I do want to let those know
who are listening and watching know that the full biographies and facts
that we are outlining tonight can be obtained from the Committee to
Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. Much of the material
we are using tonight is drawn from their sources, and we are deeply
grateful for their work and assistance.
The next journalist we will highlight tonight is Dmitry Shvets.
Dmitry's picture appears here in the middle of the chart. On April 18,
2003, the 37 year-old deputy director general of the independent
television station TV-21 Northwestern Broadcasting in the northern
Russian City of Murmansk, was shot dead outside of the station's
offices.
An unknown assailant shot Dmitry several times at approximately 5:00
in the afternoon in front of witnesses and escaped in a getaway car
that was waiting nearby. Dmitry died instantly. Dmitry was well known
in Murmansk, not only for running the television station, but also for
his political activism and a number of commercial interests. Although
he had not worked as a journalist in many years, Dmitry remained in a
managerial position and on the station's board of directors. According
to press reports in the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme
Situations, he influenced the station's editorial policy and TV-21's
reporting.
The Murmansk media covered Dmitry's murder widely and actively
speculated about the possible motive. Dmitry's colleague said the TV-21
had received several threats for its critical reporting on several
influential politicians, include Andrei Gorshkov, a candidate in the
city's mayoral race.
Several weeks before Dmitry's murder, Gorshkov had threatened TV-21's
journalists several times after they broadcast a tough interview with
him. TV-21 news editor Svetlana Bokova told the Committee to Protect
Journalists that at the time of his death, Dmitry was using his
contacts at the police and prosecutor's office to investigate the
mayoral candidate's links to organized crime.
Police investigated various motives behind the murder, including
Dmitry's political, commercial and journalistic activities at TV-21.
Dmitry's colleagues maintain that he was killed in retaliation for TV-
21's critical reporting on local politics.
Sadly, Dmitry's murder has yet to be solved.
I now yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
Mr. PENCE. On March 9, 2002, Natalya Skryl, a business reporter
working for the Nashe Vremya newspaper in the City of Rostov-on-Don in
southwestern Russia died from head injuries sustained during an attack
the previous evening. Her image appears on our poster at the lower
right-hand. Perhaps the gentleman from California could point that out
for our C-SPAN camera team, Natalya Skryl.
Late on the night of March 8, Natalya was returning to her home in
the town of Taganrog just outside of Rostov-on-Don when she was
attacked from behind and struck in the head about a dozen times with a
heavy blunt object. Neighbors called an ambulance and the police after
hearing her scream. Natalya was found unconscious just outside her home
and taken to Taganrog hospital, where she died the following day.
Natalya, who was 29, reported on local business issues for a
newspaper owned by Rostov regional authorities. Just before her death,
she was investigating an ongoing struggle for the control of Tagmet, an
metallurgical plant. Nashe Vremya editor-in-chief Vera Yuzhanskaya
believes that Natalya's death was related to her professional
activities, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
Since opening an investigation shortly after her murder, officials
have changed their theory several times. Initially, the prosecutor's
office said that because Natalya was carrying jewelry and a large sum
of cash that were not taken at the time of the murder, that robbery
could be ruled out as a motive.
But on July 24, 2002, the Taganrog Directorate of Internal Affairs
announced that robbery was the motive, and that the crime was unrelated
to her journalistic activities, according to a local radio station
report. Taganrog authorities switched their story again on September 5,
and the Nashe Vremya editor in chief, Vera Yuzhanskaya, told the
Committee to Protect Journalists, when they closed the murder
investigation without officially identifying the reason for the murder.
Gregory Bochkarov, a local analyst in Rostov-on-Don for the Moscow-
based Center For Journalism in Extreme Situations told the Committee to
Protect Journalists that the only credible motive for Natalya's murder
was her reporting about Tagmet and that police had emphasized the
robbery motive in an effort to play down the significance of her case.
Just prior to her death Natalya reportedly told several of her
colleagues that she had recently obtained sensitive information about
the Tagmet story and was planning to publish an article revealing this
information.
Let me say that again. Just prior to her death, Natalya told several
colleagues that she had recently obtained sensitive information about
the story and was planning to publish an article revealing that
information.
Natalya, like all other journalists, is among the ranks of unsolved
ranks of murders of journalists in Russia.
Mrs. Pence is waiting supper. I will ask the gentleman's forbearance.
I extend my gratitude for your leadership of our caucus, for the honor
of participating in this special order with you and to say how much I
look forward to continuing to work with you as we use this institution
of freedom to promote press freedom around the world.
Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman very much, and particularly since
the gentleman conducted a special order hour before this one, I am
amazed that his voice has held up this long. I thank the gentleman for
all your work, and appreciate you joining me tonight.
The next journalist that I will highlight this evening is Eduard
Markevich, and Eduard's picture appears in the upper left-hand corner.
Mr. Markevich was the 29-year-old editor and publisher of Novy Reft,
the local newspaper in the town of Reftinsky, Sverdlovsk Region. He was
found dead, shot in the back.
Novy Reft often criticized local officials, and Eduard's colleagues
told the ITAR-TASS news service that he had
[[Page H4481]]
received threatening telephone calls prior to the attack. This was not
the first attack on Eduard, the Region-Inform news agency reported. In
1998, two unknown assailants broke into his apartment and severely beat
him in front of his pregnant wife. They were never caught.
In 1999, Eduard was illegally detained for 10 days after local
prosecutor's office charged him with defamation over a Novy Reft
article questioning the propriety of a lucrative government contract
that gave a former deputy prosecutor the exclusive right to represent
the Reftinsky administration in court.
In May 2001, federal prosecutor general Vladimir Ustinov reprimanded
the local prosecutor for violating Eduard's constitutional rights.
Police investigated, or launched an investigation into Eduard's
murder. Now 6 years after the journalist's death. Authorities have made
no progress, the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme
Situations has reported. There is continually no progress made.
His wife continues to publish the Novy Reft, and, this evening,
Eduard is in our thoughts and in our memories.
The next journalist I will highlight this evening, is Adam
Tepsurgayev. Adam's picture appears just here to my right. Adam was a
24-year-old Chechen cameraman. He was shot dead at a neighbor's house
in the village of Alkhan-Kala. His brother, Ali, was wounded in the leg
during the attack.
A Russian government spokesman blamed Chechen guerillas for the
murder. The gunman reportedly spoke Chechen, but local residents said
the guerillas had no reason to kill a cameraman. During the first
Chechen war in 1994-1996 Adam worked as a driver and fixer for foreign
journalists. Later he started shooting footage from the front lines of
the conflict between Russian troops and separatists guerillas. Reuters'
Moscow bureau chief, Martin Nesirky, described him as an ``irregular
contributor.'' While most of Reuter's footage from Chechyna in 2000 was
credited to Adam, including shots of Chechen field commander Shamil
Basayev, having his foot amputated, he had not worked for Reuters in
the 6 months before he died. His murder, too, is yet to be solved, and
there are no details about any investigation.
The next journalist I will highlight this evening is Valery Ivanov.
Valery's picture appears here. On April 29, 2002, Mr. Ivanov, editor of
the newspaper, Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye, in the southern Russian city
of Togliatti, was shot dead outside his home at approximately 11 at
night. He was 32 years old and was shot eight times in the head at
point blank range while entering his car, a colleague at the newspaper
said.
Eye witnesses saw a 25- to 30-year-old man walk up to Valery's car
and shoot him, according to local press reports and the Committee to
Protect Journalists sources. The killer used a pistol with a silencer
and fled the scene on foot.
Valery's colleagues believe the killing was connected to his work.
The newspaper he worked for is well known for its reports on local
organized crime, drug trafficking and official corruption. Valery also
served as a deputy in the local legislative assembly.
Local police opened a criminal investigation into the murder, and
many considered several possible motives, though it is believed by many
that he was killed in retaliation for his writing. Five years later, no
one has been brought to justice for Valery's murder.
The next journalist we will highlight this evening is Sergey Ivanov.
There is little known about the death of Sergey Ivanov. His picture
appears here.
Around 10 p.m. on October 3, 2000, unknown gunmen killed Sergey in
front of his apartment building in Togliatti, a town in Samara
Province. He was the director of the largest independent television
company in Togliatti. Sergey was shot five times in the head and chest.
Lada-TV, which the 30-year-old Sergey had headed since 1993, was a
significant player in the local political scene. Investigators have
considered a possible or commercial programming dispute as the
motivation for the murder. However, the murder still remains unsolved.
Without a complete investigation, we may never know the circumstances
of his death.
The next journalist murdered in Russia we will highlight this evening
is Iskandar Khatloni. Mr. Khatloni's picture appears to the far right
on this chart, to my far right, that is.
On September 21, 2000, Iskandar, who was a reporter for the Tajik-
language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was attacked late
at night at his Moscow apartment by an unknown, axe-wielding assailant.
The door of his apartment was not damaged, indicating that there was no
forced entry and that the journalist might have known his attacker.
The 46-year-old Iskandar was struck twice in the head, according to
Radio Free Europe's Moscow bureau. He then stumbled into the street and
collapsed and was later found by a passerby. The journalist died later
that night in Moscow's Botkin Hospital. Local police opened a murder
investigation, but had made little progress by year's end.
Iskandar had worked since 1996 as a Moscow-based journalist for the
Tajik service of the U.S.-funded RFE/RL, which broadcasts daily news
programming to Tajikistan.
A Radio Free Europe spokeswoman said at the time of his death,
Iskandar had been working on stories about the Russian military's human
rights abuses in Chechyna.
{time} 1800
Earlier in the year, a senior official in Russia's Media Ministry
charged that Radio Free Europe was ``hostile to our state.'' His death,
along with all the other journalists killed in Russia since 2000,
remains unsolved.
The next journalist we will highlight this evening is Sergey Novikov.
On the night of July 26, 2000, Sergey Novikov, the 36-year-old owner of
the only independent radio station in Smolensk, was shot and killed on
the stairwell of his apartment building. The killer shot him four times
and escaped through the back door.
Sergey had received death threats earlier in the year after
announcing his intent to run for provincial governorship. He was one of
the most successful businessmen in the region, serving on the board of
directors of a local glass-making factory.
Sergey's employees believed his murder was politically motivated. His
radio station, Radio Vesna, was a frequent critic of the government of
Smolensk Province. Three days before his death, Sergey had taken part
in a television panel that had discussed the alleged corruption of the
provincial deputy government. To this day, his killer remains at large
and the police have not determined a motive for his death.
My time will soon run out. There is one final reporter that I wish to
highlight on this chart tonight, Igor Domnikov. On July 16, 2000, Igor,
a 42-year-old reporter and special projects editor for the twice-weekly
Moscow paper, Novaya Gazeta, died after being attacked 2 months earlier
in the entryway of his apartment building in southeastern Moscow.
According to numerous sources, the reporter was attacked by an
unidentified assailant who hit him repeatedly on the head with a heavy
object, presumably a hammer, and left him lying unconscious in a pool
of blood, where a neighbor found him.
Igor was taken to the hospital with injuries to the skull and brain.
After surgery and 2 months in a coma, the journalist died on July 16.
From the very beginning, Igor's colleagues and the police were
certain the attack was related to his professional activity or that of
the newspaper. It was also believed for a while that the assailant
mistook Igor, who covered social and cultural issues, for a Novaya
Gazeta investigative reporter named Oleg Sultanov, who lives in the
same building. Sultanov claimed to have received threats from the
Federal Security Service in January for his reporting on corruption in
the Russian oil industry.
According to the paper's editorial staff, the Interior Ministry was
actively investigating the brutal attack and promised Igor's colleagues
to finish the investigation by the end of the summer if the latter
agreed not to interfere or disclose any details of the case to the
public. However, in early fall of that year the police downgraded the
case's high priority status and archived it, as allowed by law for
cases unresolved within 3 months.
[[Page H4482]]
Igor's colleagues were not informed about the downgrade. As they
explained, archiving does not mean outright closure of the
investigation; the case may be reopened if new information emerges. But
this did not appear likely and has yet to happen almost 7 years later.
Those are the journalists we have time to highlight this evening.
They are just a window into the attack on press freedom going on in
Russia, and they stand as a shining example of the courage and
dedication of some of the men and women around the world devoted to
freedom of the press.
Tonight we honor their memory and we call on the Putin government to
investigate their deaths and hold those responsible accountable
____________________