H.E. Vladimir V. Putin
President
The Kremlin
Moscow
Russian Federation
Fax: (011.7.095) 206-5173/ 6277
Your Excellency:
We write to protest, in the strongest possible terms, your government@quot;s efforts to control and manipulate media coverage of the tragic hostage crisis in Beslan. These attempts range from the initial lie about the number of hostages held to what appears to be the poisoning of Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, to prevent her from reaching the scene.
The Overseas Press Club of America has been defending journalists under attack for doing their jobs for 65 years. In 2001, Anna Politkovskaya became the first Russian journalist to be honored with our Artyom Borovik award, now given annually to a Russian journalist who has displayed great personal courage in reporting on Russian culture and society. According to the International Press Institute and reports from her colleagues at Novaya Gazeta, she was on her way from Moscow to Beslan to cover the hostage crisis when she accepted a cup of tea from an airline hostess and lapsed into unconsciousness ten minutes later. She was hospitalized in Rostov and has returned to Moscow.
This is the most dramatic, but far from the only, case of journalists being hindered from covering this major story. Amro Abdel Hamid, Moscow bureau chief of the Arab satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya, was reportedly detained for two days for unexplained reasons in Mineralniye Vody while on his way from Beslan to Moscow. Nana Lezhave and Levan Tefvadze, a crew for the Georgian TV company Rustavi 2, were arrested in Beslan and charged with entering Russia without a visa, which in fact they were legally entitled to do. Andrei Babitsky of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe was held at Moscow@quot;s Vnukovo Airport under suspicion of carrying explosives. When no explosives were found in his luggage, he was charged with hooliganism and sentenced to five days in jail because two other men tried to provoke a fight while he was waiting for his flight. And finally, Raf Shakirov, editor in chief of the daily Izvestiya, says he was forced to resign when the newspaper@quot;s publisher, Prof-Media, objected that his coverage of the crisis was “too emotional.”
Your Excellency, we in America are sadly familiar with the strains of waging a war on terrorism. The first instinct of any government under such attack is to crack down — first on the terrorists, then on anyone who seems to support their cause, and finally on anyone reporting facts, opinions or viewpoints that the government finds hostile or merely inconvenient to deal with. However understandable, this kind of crackdown is not only ethically wrong but counterproductive. Suppressing the truth invariably encourages dissent and robs a government of the credibility it
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needs if it is to function without repression. Your nation has a long heritage of authoritarian rule. It is our hope, and the hope of the free world, that you will be able to escape it. We urge you to reaffirm your initial support for press freedom and instruct your bureaucracy, from top to bottom, not only to tolerate it but to promote it.
Thank you for your attention. We hope you will reply.
Respectfully yours,
Norman A. Schorr Larry Martz
Co-chairmen, Freedom of the Press Committee
CC:
Igor Ivanov
Foreign Minister
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
g. Moscow 121200
Russian Federation
Fax: (011.7.095) 230-2130
Yuriy Victorovich Ushakov
Ambassador of Russia to the U.S.A.
Embassy of the Russian Federation
2650 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20007
Fax: (202) 298-5735
Ambassador Sergey V. Lavrov
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation
to the United Nations
136 East 67th Street
New York, NY 10021
Fax: (212) 628-0252
Alexander R. Vershbow
U.S. Ambassador to Russia
Embassy of the United States of America
8 Bolshoy Devyatinskiy Pereulok
Moscow 121099
Russia
Fax: (011.7.095) 728-5090