Freedom of expression and the rights of peoples are violated in Russia's
national autonomous regions
12.05.05
In national autonomous regions of Russia, of the right of the
individual to free expression of opinion and to receiving information,
and the rights of indigenous peoples of these regions are grossly violated.
Against the background of general deterioration in the area of democracy
in the Russian Federation, more and more concern has been recently caused
by the situation of the fourth estate, the mass media. The Russian authority
systematically imposes its control on the information resources and actively
interferes in the mechanisms of opinion-shaping in the civil society.
The assignment of Modest Kolerov, formerly chief editor of the
information agency REGNUM, as head of the Department of Foreign Interregional
and Cultural Contacts at the Office of President of the Russian Federation
means strengthening the propaganda front to keep up the old Soviet practice
of creating the image of an external enemy in the public opinion all over
the country. Paradoxically, the stuff produced by that agency has been
focused on accusing other post-Soviet states in precisely the breach of
freedom of expression – as, for example, the Baltic countries concerning
the «ethnic issue».1
In its external information policy Kremlin has to count with equally
strong rivals, which compels it to respect at least the limits of internationally
recognised legal arguments and the etiquette of international policy. In
their internal policy, using the shield of sovereignty, the Russia’s authorities
are much less scrupulous in the choice of levers to apply pressure on the
society. This arsenal includes various mechanisms from the once again applied
practice of armed «cleansing» to the good old Soviet practice of «telephone
law».
In the course of time more coarse methods have been used. While in the
times of perestroika any public initiative that needed the State’s
support might be rejected for the reason of the economic crisis and the
shortage of resources, the present economic situation in Russia is more
favorable, partly because of rising oil prices. However, if the situation
does not still permit to close an opposition newspaper by an administrative
decision, it can be strangled by bureaucratic and economic methods.
Restrictive methods are practiced by both federal and regional authorities.
Oppression in the regions is tacitly approved and, moreover, encouraged
by central institutions. The situation at the level of units of the Federation
has its peculiarities. The democratic opposition has so far evaded the
pressure of local authorities by printing its publications outside their
administrative areas. Now, however, authorities of neighbouring regions
have established a sort of mutual co-operation: they forbid printing opposition
publications of their neighbours. The announced scheme of integration of
administrative units would kill the last chance to express dissenting opinion.
These mechanisms of pressure can be demonstrated by considering the
cases of regions that commonly pass the attention of general public. Of
late, the situation in the Mari and Udmurt republics has nevertheless gained
international publicity because of the restrictions on the freedom of expression
and other rights and freedoms. It is particularly interesting to analyse
the situation in these regions, since these are ethnic republics. In either
case, the titular nationality that gives the republic its name is now an
ethnic minority. Also, as noted by Valery Tishkov, Director of the
Ethnology and Anthropology Institute of the Acad. Sci. of Russia, representatives
of the titular nationality are by no means in power. They are underrepresented
politically, including in the government institutions.2
For example, there are only six Udmurts among the hundred deputies of
the local National Assembly of Udmurtia, whereas the share of Udmurts and
Bessermens in the population is 30 per cent. In the local government of
Mari El, only two Maris have remained, although the Maris make up 43 per
cent among the population of the republic. At the tacit approval by federal
authorities, above all by Sergey Kiriyenko as Plenipotentiary Representative
of the President of the Russian Federation in the Volga Federal District,
the policy of oppression of the local nationality is continued by President
of the Republic of Mari El Leonid Markelov, including large-scale
removal of the Maris from leading positions. Undesirable persons are purged
not only from the government but from regional and local administrations
as well.3
Thus by harassing the opposition mass media the authorities violate
the rights of ethnic minorities, since the last alternative representation
channel available for indigenous peoples is blocked.
The Republic of Mari El
There is practically no freedom of expression in the Republic of Mari
El. The principal source of information is the State-owned media that is
completely controlled by the administration of President Mari El Leonid
Markelov who, as a token of his achievements, was recently awarded with
an order by President of Russia. At a meeting with representatives of Mari
media on 22 February 2002, Markelov said: «How can I allow the public-owned
publishing houses to issue anti-presidential newspapers?».
Officials at the Administration of President and the Office of Public
Prosecutor of the Republic of Mari El use the so-called «telephone law»
to see that critical publications are removed, and threaten the mass media
with closing down or stripping of subsidies on which practically all mass
media in the republic more or less depend.4
During the last five years, non-governmental publications were exorcised
from public-owned printing houses by various means. For example, the publishing
house Periodika Mari El quadrupled its tariffs for private mass
media against those for public-owned media. Furthermore, these publications
became indebted to the printing house because of not being timely informed
about the increase in prices. It is noteworthy that publishing houses often
censored non-governmental publications. According to Mr. Aleksandr Solovyev,
former director of the printing house of Mari Polygraphic Publishing Enterprise
who was recently dismissed, ready newspaper pages were removed after telephone
calls from the administration of the President Mari El.5
Most of non-governmental publications in Mari El cannot be printed in
the republic; although the printing houses formally respond by saying they
have no capacities, the actual reason is the unwritten veto imposed by
the authorities.
In the past, opposition newspapers were printed in neighbouring regions,
mainly in the city of Yaransk (the Kirov district). However, after the
appointment of Mr. Valery Komissarov as head of the Committee on
Information Policy of the State Duma, printing houses in neighbouring regions
have begun refraining from rendering service to independent newspapers
of Mari El. A representative of the Republic of Mari El in the State Duma,
Komissarov was elected at the personal support of Markelov with the strong
use of local administrative resources.
For example, this year the opposition newspaper Dobrye Sosedi
(«Good Neighbours») has managed to print three issues only. The last number
was dated 22 April. It is worth to note that this time the editor refrained
from indicating the printing house in the publisher’s imprint, afraid of
losing his last opportunity to publish the newspaper.
Censorship of the mass media reduces the circulation of local newspapers
of Mari El. The circulation of Mari El, the largest newspaper in
Mari language, has plummeted from 11 thousand in 2000 has dropped to 6,5
thousand in 2005. Even the news report about the assault and battery of
Chairman of the All-Mari Council Vladimir Kozlov in the beginning
of February 2005 was not published by this newspaper at a telephone command
from the authorities. The report was perfectly neutral, without any hint
at the probable connection of the attack to Kozlov’s professional activities.
Incidentally, the Chairman of All-Mari Council is elected by the Mari People’s
Congress and the Mari El introduces itself as «the newspaper of
the Mari people».
The Udmurt Republic
The situation with freedom of expression is not better in another Finno-Ugric
republic, Udmurtia. One of the few opposition newspapers, Argumenty
I Fakty v Udmurtii, was closed down last summer. It was punished for
having taken the liberty of publishing, in pursuit of sensation, some materials
criticising the authorities.
The next wave of persecution against the only remaining opposition newspaper
and information agency Den' («The Day») has now began in Udmurtia,
according to Novaya Gazeta (11 April 2005).6 All
other periodicals are already under the control of the republic’s authorities.
Earlier, the Izhevsk Polygraphic Enterprise refused to print the Day
in the Udmurt capital Izhevsk. For that reason, it was printed in neighbouring
areas during the previous election campaign: first in Kirov and, for the
last three months, in Perm. For a while, the editorial office had even
gone underground: formally, an office was rented but the editorial work
was carried out in a rented private two-room apartment.
The last attack of the authorities on the Day was caused by its
coverage of mass rallies against the «monetization of benefits» similar
to rallies that took place in other cities all over Russia. People at the
meetings demanded also the retirement of Aleksandr Volkov from the
office of President of Udmurtia.
As a result, the company Informpechat', a retail distributor
of press, refused to sell the Den' through its point-of-sale network
(according to the Novaya Gazeta). The same days, windows of the
editorial office were twice smashed with bricks by unknown persons, and
then the cable was cut off in the house lobby, which prevented the newspaper
from covering at its website a five-thousand strong protest rally in Izhevsk.
The harassment continued with Chairman of the Government of Udmurtia
Yuri
Pitkevich personally calling important advertisers and partners of
the newspaper, including those outside the republic, forbidding them to
advertise in the Den', according to Novaya Gazeta. He probably
did not have an idea of possible consequences of his telephone campaign.
In connection with these calls, Chief Editor of the Day Mr. Sergey
Shchukin lodged a complaint to the Office of Public Prosecutor, demanding
a criminal investigation in making obstacles to legal professional journalist
activities.7 It is doubtful, however, that this case,
as many other similar ones, would ever reach a fair solution in the court.
The most recent infringement on the freedom of expression in Udmurtia
was a pogrom in the editorial office of another opposition newspaper, Liberalnaya
Udmurtia, committed on 4 May. Practically all technical equipment of
the newspaper has been destroyed. As in other similar cases, the criminals
remain unknown. The objective, once again, was not the theft of property
but its destruction. As a result, the newspaper will probably have to suspend
its activity for a long time. The most probable reason of this action was
the active coverage by the Liberalnaya Udmurtia of protest rallies
against the monetization of benefits.
Breach of the rights of ethnic minorities
International instruments on human rights that the Russian Federation
has accessed oblige it to ensure, inter alia, the freedom of expression
and the rights of persons belonging to ethnic minorities. How is it possible
that, while violations occur systematically, none of the cases has been
brought to an international court?
A plaintiff frequently wins the process already in a lower court, but
then the authorities apply bureaucratic and economic pressure and newspapers
have to close down. As a result, such cases do not reach the international
institutions. This was the State machinery has successfully blocked legal
proceedings by illegal methods.
As mentioned above, persecution of the press by the authorities results
also in the violation of the right of persons belonging to ethnic minorities
to use their language in the mass media and to acquire information in their
language. These violations, however, are not limited to the information
sphere. The same situation is in other spheres of public life as well.
As for broadcasting in the languages of nationalities, the reorganisation
of the national public broadcasting company «Gosteleradiokompaniya Rossii»
has considerably aggravated the situation. Television and radio broadcasting
in the Mari language was sharply diminished this year. The weekly TV transmission
in Mari was limited to just three hours, while on the local radio only
two hours out of the total 11 have been left weekly for broadcasting in
Mari.8 The Udmurt Republican Radio and the local 34th
TV Channel have reduced their transmission six and four times respectively,
as compared with the last year (according to the newspaper Permskiye
Sosedi). This means that programmes in the Udmurt language have now
practically disappeared from local channels.9
As regards school education for nationalities, an irreparable blow was
done to the Kuzebay Gerd Udmurt National Gymnasium. Despite picketing and
hunger-strikes, the school was essentially closed and its children transferred
partly to other schools and partly to a kindergarten.10
One of those schools, located in the outskirts of town, was formally named
the Gymnasium. However, the schoolchildren transferred to it are just a
small part of those of the former National Gymnasium. The accumulated experience
of the nationality school has thus been hopelessly lost.
In the Republic of Mari El, the only musical college that bears the
name of the first Mari professional composer of Ivan Palantai and is a
symbol of Mari culture, is now at the stage of liquidation. As a result,
the Mari culture may remain without professional composers and musicians,
because the central part will be lost in the education chain of professional
musicians: musical school – musical college – conservatoire. The college
will be incorporated into the local College of Culture whose status and
professional level is inferior.
The Mari Public Pedagogical Institute, an educational establishment
that trains the staff for national schools, including teachers of the Mari
language and literature, and develops the technique of instruction and
the approach to ethnopedagogics, will be incorporated now into a standard
provincial university of academic kind. This reorganisation betrays the
intention of the authorities to keep up the policy of curbing the teaching
of Mari language and literature in the schools of Mari El.
The apparent reasons for closing down these educational establishments
are to deliver another blow to the system of national education under the
pretence of reorganisation, and to punish two overly independent managers
of Mari origin, Mrs. Raisa Yashmetova and Mr. Valerian Yegorov,
who are heads of respectively the Ivan Palantai Musical College and the
Pedagogical Institute. Yegorov has probably displeased the authorities
by supporting the opposition candidate Mikhail Dolgov, also a Mari,
at the last local presidential elections.
Around regards theatre are of nationalities, in Mari El people still
remember how, through a similar «reorganisation» of the Shketan Mari National
Theatre and even formal liquidation of all Mari theatres in 2001, the authorities
managed to get rid of two other inconvenient Maris: theatre manager Viktor
Nikolayev and art director Vasily Pekteyev. In Udmurtia, instead
of implementing the promise made during the election campaign to construct
a new house for the Udmurt National Theatre huddling for over a year in
an annex, the Presidential Palace, a circus and a zoo are being constructed.
The local press has commented the situation in the following way: «Here
we live without a theatre in the ‘zoo of nations’».11
Conclusions
The information policy of the State as pursued by the federal as well
as local administrations of the Russian Federation cannot by considered
just an accidental result of imperfection of the system. This is a deliberate
complex activity coordinated with policy in other spheres, above all with
the nationalities policy. The resulting vector of efforts is directed at
restoration of a centralised system controlled from its top. The methods
chosen for this purpose are, akin to the Soviet regime, the restriction
of democracy and, considering the continual breach of linguistic and cultural
rights, the «integration» of a multiethnic country by way of assimilation
of its peoples.
By pursuing this policy the Russian authorities are limiting the right
of non-Russian peoples of the Russian Federation to free pursuit of their
economic, social and cultural development. Such policy is a violation of
the Articles 1, 19 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
the Articles 1 and 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, and the Article 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights.
Estonian Institute for Human Rights
Tallinn, Estonia
May 2005
________
1 МИД России: Латвия
не соблюдает ни права человека, ни свободу слова = Russia’s Foreign Ministry:
Latvia Observes Neither the Rights of the Individual Nor Freedom of Speech
(in Russian).
http://www.regnum.ru/news/439597.html
2 В. А. Тишков. Этничность и политика
= V. A. Tishkov. Ethnicity and policy (in Russian). Moscow : Nauka, 2001,
p. 151.
3 http://www.mari.ee/rus/soc/polit/sl.htm,
http://www.mari.ee/rus/soc/polit/fakty.htm
4 Положение СМИ в республике Марий Эл.
Отчет участников миссии Фонда защиты гласности о поездке в г. Йошкар-Олу
(9–11 декабря 2002 г.). = The Situation of Mass Media in the Republic Mari
El. Report by Participants of Mission of the Foundation for Protection
of Publicity to the City of Yoshkar-Ola (9 to 11 December 2002). http://www.gdf.ru/arh/file019.shtml
5 Ibid.
6 In: Новая газета. No. 26, 11 April
2005. http://2005.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2005/26n/n26n-s07.shtml
7 Мы переживем этот беспредел: главный
редактор «Дня» Сергей Щукин о газете и власти = We Will Survive This Lawlessness:
Chief Editor of The Day Sergey Shchukin On the Press and the Power. In:
День No. 15, 14 April 2005. http://dayudm.ru/article.php?id=3080
8 Unofficial data. Despite numerous requests
about the amount of TV and radio broadcasting in the Mari language, neither
the Mari regional public broadcasting company nor е Ministriн of Culture,
Press and Nationalities have given precise figures.
9 In: Пермские соседи, 22 March 2005.
http://www.alpha.perm.ru/sosedi/news0.php?n=1684
10 For more detail see: Гордиев узел:
Удмуртская национальная гимназия глазами родителей и чиновников = Gordian
knot: The Udmurt National High School Through the Eyes of Parents and Officials).
In: День No. 13, 31 March 2005. http://dayudm.ru/article.php?id=3046
11 Зоопарк российско-удмурдской дружбы:
Президенту Удмурдии Сан Санычу = The Zoo of Russian-Udmurd Friendship:
To President of Udmurdia Uncle Alexander. In: День No. 12 от 24 марта 2005.
http://dayudm.ru/article.php?id=3038
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