Moscow Times - 05.07.2001

 

 

The Moscow Times

NTV Precedent Worries Former Soviet Republics

By Alex Lupis

As the NTV saga has unfolded in Moscow, Western attention has focused on the possibility that the Gazprom takeover of the network could mean the end of independent journalism in Russia.

But the NTV takeover is also frightening to journalists in Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan and other former Soviet republics. They fear that their own governments will now follow the NTV precedent by orchestrating the state takeover of independent media and then dressing it up as a business dispute.

The collapse of the Soviet Union opened up space for independent journalism in all the former republics. Over the past few years, however, most countries in the region have seen a steep decline in press freedom.

In Ukraine, for example, the abduction and presumed murder of Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze last September brought the plight of Ukrainian journalists into sharp relief, while allegations that President Leonid Kuchma directed the killing may yet bring down his government.

In Belarus last July, state authorities were suspected in the disappearance of Russian television journalist Dmitry Zavadsky, who was said to have shot video footage of Belarussian security agents fighting alongside rebels in neighboring Chechnya.

And across the region, governments often dress naked repression in liberal drag by invoking "the rule of law." But Gazprom's takeover of NTV marks the debut of a more refined technique of muzzling the independent press using the seemingly apolitical tactics of advanced Western capitalism.

Both Gazprom and the Kremlin have repeatedly claimed to respect press freedom in general and the editorial independence of NTV in particular. Yet Russian officials have hardly forsaken Soviet-style information control, as obvious in the Kremlin's efforts to censor all news coverage of its war in Chechnya.

"When the nation mobilizes its forces to achieve some task [in this case, crushing the Chechen rebel movement], that imposes obligations on everyone, including the media," Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told the business newspaper Kommersant in January.

Governments throughout the region still take their policy cues from Moscow, and they are watching the NTV crisis closely. And that's why independent journalists in neighboring countries are so worried.

"Our authorities always say that if something is possible in Russia, then it is possible in Azerbaijan," said Azer Hasret, a journalist with the Baku daily Azadliq. "Azeri and other governments will 'learn' how to shut up the independent media after this case."

Alex Lupis is the Europe & Central Asia program coordinator at the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.