At Lantos commission, CPJ details Russian press climate
A bill pending in the Russian parliament would give state security alarming new censorship powers, CPJ’s Nina Ognianova told the Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in testimony in Washington today. During a hearing on human rights issues in Russia, Ognianova also voiced concern about continued impunity in journalist murders.
Impunity Summit: Solidarity in fighting journalist murders
Every day at CPJ, we count numbers: 18 journalists killed in Russia since 2000, 32 journalists and media workers slaughtered in the Maguindanao massacre, 88 journalists murdered over the last 10 years in Iraq. But on Tuesday night at CPJ’s Impunity Summit at Columbia University, CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon clarified why we were gathered:…
Beketov still recovering from attack a year later in Russia
Those familiar with Mikhail Beketov’s ordeal describe his survival as nothing short of a miracle. The once fit, towering 51-year-old who campaigned on environmental issues and criticized his city government’s policies through the pages of his newspaper is now gone. But the former editor of Khimkinskaya Pravda, an independent publication that exposed the blunders of the Khimki…
Op-ed: The Kremlin Can’t Have It Both Ways
Jointly authored by CPJ’s Kati Marton and Nina Ognianova, an op-ed piece is running on The New York Times’ Web site today and will be published in the November 10 edition of The International Herald Tribune. The article is a follow-up to Marton and Ognianova’s mission to Russia to launch our special report Anatomy of Injustice: The…
A memorial to killed journalists, a call to action
We’ve launched a new section of our Web site, and we hope you take a few minutes to read some of its pages. There is one, for example, on Russian reporter Natalya Estemirova, who dared to examine human rights crimes in Chechnya. Another is devoted to Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a Tijuana newspaper editor who…
Clinton raises impunity in journalist murders in Russia
When CPJ issued its recent special report Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia, we called on world leaders to join us in engaging Russian leaders on human rights, press freedom, and impunity. We were pleased to hear Secretary Hillary Clinton do just that today when she spoke about impunity at a…
CPJ makes headway in cases in Russia, Georgia
Amid ongoing attacks on journalists, CPJ advocacy in Europe and Central Asia has generated some positive results. Earlier this month, a CPJ delegation met with Russian and European officials, who promised to revisit 17 journalist murders in Russia since 2000. The declared commitment to reverse Russia’s grim record of impunity came after we presented our…
Russia, EU tell CPJ they will act on Russian murders
On September 15, a CPJ delegation released a special report in Moscow on impunity in journalist killings committed in Russia under the country’s current leadership. The report, Anatomy of Injustice, garnered an unusual amount of attention from the Russian media. Our press conference at the Independent Press Center was packed with journalists, both domestic and…
Journalists under threat: The psychology of sacrifice
Over the summer, as a book I’d written about the lives of murdered journalists went to press, a crusading human rights reporter from the Russian republic of Chechnya was shot dead. I was not surprised by the details of her murder, just as the Chechen reporter was not surprised she’d become a target for execution:…
Natalya’s death: You don’t kill a story by killing a journalist
We were only 30 on Friday: representatives of human rights organizations, a few journalists and academics, a couple of anonymous “concerned citizens.” Standing on the Place de la Liberté (Freedom Square) in Brussels two blocks from the Parliament, a few meters away from a police team that had asked us to limit ourselves to a…