List of Journalists Killed in Russia - Killing Not The Only or Always The Best Measure

Killing Not The Only or Always The Best Measure

There are certain countries where, over the past two decades, killing of journalists has been a regular occurrence (e.g. Colombia, Philippines, India). There are authoritarian regimes where few if any journalists have been killed in the same period (e.g. China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba) - journalists know their place and other forms of coercion keep them in line. Within Russia there has been regular monitoring since the late 1990s by the Glasnost Defence Foundation and the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations of all forms of intimidation or coercion used against journalists. Their evidence suggests that direct and indirect pressure on media outlets, increasingly through the courts in cases of criminal defamation, is widespread and ranges from obstruction of publishing activities, to assaults on staff and frequent threats to investigative reporters.

If approximately three quarters of the murders of journalists over the past 16 years are probably not related to their investigations and publications, the CJES considers that up to 70% of assaults, which annually run into the dozens, are work-related. Sometimes these are very serious indeed. In November 2008 Mikhail Beketov, chief editor of the Khimkinskaya pravda, a paper in a Moscow suburb, was beaten so severely that although he survived, and his paper has even resumed limited publication, by early 2010 he had still not regained the power of speech or independent movement.