Kremlin accused of Soviet-style curbs on media Russia`s free press is under attack and observers fear the internet
will be next
ByLine: Fred Weir in Moscow
Independent voices are disappearing from the Russian media and even the internet may soon be threatened by a
Soviet-style clampdown, human rights experts warn.
"Freedom of speech officially exists in Russia, but the space where it can be exercised no longer exists,"
said Arseny Roginsky, chairman of the Memorial Society, a human rights watchdog.
"The main tendency of recent years has been the Kremlin's campaign to destroy the few isolated islands of
independence and democracy that still exist in Russia."
Russian President Vladimir Putin, visiting the US last week to attend the summit of the Group of Eight leading
industrial countries, has pledged to expand democracy, including a "genuinely free media", as a key goal of
his second term.
But experts warn that a law being drafted by the pro-Kremlin majority in parliament threatens to extend state
dominance over Russia's freewheeling internet.
"It is irritating for the Kremlin to see that no one is guiding the internet, and so its instincts are to move
in and impose control," said Fyodor Kravchenko, an independent media expert.
"They will soon have the tools to clamp down, intimidate and silence internet users as soon as the orders come
down from the Kremlin, just as things are in television broadcasting".
Analysts also point to last week's firing of leading television journalist Leonid Parfyonov, allegedly at the
behest of Russian secret services, as a chilling milestone on a road to a very different destination than media
freedom.
Over the past four years several Russian television stations have been closed and the once-independent NTV network
has been taken over by the state-owned Gazprom energy giant.
Though some Moscow newspapers remain outside state control, and the internet is still free, they reach only a few
people while Russia's three television networks are the main source of information for 150 million viewers.
Mr Parfyonov, whose Sunday night Namedny show had been NTV's top-rated public affairs programme, was ordered to
cut a June 1 interview with the widow of a Chechen separatist leader. The Chechen had been assassinated last February in
the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, where two Russians are on trial for the killing.
An internal NTV memo subsequently leaked by Mr Parfyonov to the newspaper Kommersant appeared to show that station
management made the decision after getting a phone call from the FSB, the former KGB.
"The request came from people on a level that you don't argue with," Mr Parfyonov said.
He was fired for "failing to support the policies of NTV management".
The existence of Mr Parfyonov's outspoken show has often been cited as evidence that all is well with the media
in Mr Putin's Russia. A handful of similar shows, including Savik Shuster's Svoboda Slova and Vladimir
Pozner's Vremena, are now being anxiously watched by human rights monitors.
Mr Pozner, whose impeccable English has made him a well-known Russian personality abroad, has admitted that his
programme has been censored at least once this year, but said he hoped today's authorities were too intelligent to
restore Soviet-style media controls.
"To prohibit something or to intimidate someone is a very poor method," Mr Pozner said. "Eventually,
it leads to a situation in which you have a dissident."
Last week Mr Shuster, a Canadian citizen, had unexpected visa trouble after Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov publicly
complained that as a "foreigner" Mr Shuster had no right to air a critical May programme about Moscow's
bid for the 2012 Olympics.
"These incidents are a demonstration that if the authorities want to cut off the oxygen, they can easily do
it," said Nikolai Petrov, an expert with the independent Carnegie Centre in Moscow.
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