List of Journalists Killed in Russia - Dissenting Voices, Legal Issues

Dissenting Voices, Legal Issues

Immediately after Politkovskaya's murder doubts were expressed about the chances of justice being done, even though the victim in this case was a journalist who had acquired a worldwide reputation (cf. Dmitry Kholodov in 1994). American commentator Anne Applebaum thought that the murderers of Politkovskaya would never be found. There were also some dissenting and sceptical voices.

German author Gabriele Krone-Schmalz wrote that many of the deaths of journalists could be explained by ordinary criminality. She suggested that the number of killings during Putin's presidency was no higher than under Boris Yeltsin. Writing for the maverick eXile publication in Moscow, Kirill Pankratov accused the CPJ of applying different standards to different countries and for classifying certain suspicious deaths of Russian journalists as "confirmed" murders. He and others noted that some of the murders had now been solved and the suspects jailed.

Recent killings, in various parts of Russia, of Ilyas Shurpayev, Yury Shebalkin, Konstantin Borovko and Leonid Etkind did indeed lead to trials and convictions. This was also true of some of the men involved in the brutal, earlier murder of 23-year old Internet journalist Vladimir Sukhomlin. Ilya Zimin's alleged killer, meanwhile, was tried in his native Moldova and acquitted. Yet these examples do not disprove the charge of partial justice since only one of the deaths was related beyond doubt to the journalistic work of the victim.

Criticism from abroad was frequently perceived and rejected as selective. However, Russia's sought-for status as a member of G8 from 1997 onwards set a benchmark that showed the continuing deaths of journalists, and of other media restrictions within the country, in an unfavourable light. Also of importance was the country's admission to the Council of Europe and, as a result, the potential involvement, after 1998, of the European Court of Human Rights as an arbiter of last resort. Unsuccessful attempts were made for the 2004 acquittal of Dmitry Kholodov's alleged killers to be examined in Strasbourg. So far the Court has only once determined the failure of the Russian authorities to pursue those responsible for the violent deaths of journalists. In 2005 it ruled that the October 1999 killing in Chechnya of cameramen Ramzan Mezhidov and Shamil Gigayev and of more than thirty other civilians who died during the same incident had not been properly investigated.