Russia: Impunity reigns for reporters' killers

Moscow, May 29: A failure to prosecute journalists' killers is breeding an atmosphere of impunity around the world, media campaigners and union leaders said in Russia, one of the deadliest locations for reporters.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) chose Moscow for its congress which it holds every three years to highlight the threat to journalists in Russia.

''Russia is the country where the most journalists have been killed in peacetime,'' IFJ General-Secretary Aidan White said.

But in the last 18 months the situation has worsened further, he said.

Last October a gunman shot dead human rights journalist Anna Politkovskaya at the entrance of her central Moscow apartment block as she returned from a Saturday afternoon shopping trip.

Since then four other journalists have been shot and another fell from an apartment window in suspicious circumstances, the IFJ said.

The media watchdog chief for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation for Security in Europe (OSCE) Miklos Haraszti said governments around the world had failed to imprison journalists' killers, thereby encouraging even more.

''There is only one thing worse than intimidation, violence and murdering of journalists and that is government tolerance of intimidation, violence and murdering of journalists,'' Haraszti said.

Few Convictions

Journalists most at risk are investigative journalists working for independent media in countries where state controlled and state influenced media dominates.

In Russia, the independent media says it has been silenced since President Vladimir Putin took power in 2000, charges the Kremlin has always denied.

Two weeks ago several staff from a Russian radio news service walked out because they said the new editor had introduced an informal blacklist for anti-Kremlin guests.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been due to speak to the 500 attendees at the Soviet-era congress hall on the banks of the Moskva River but he pulled out at the last moment without explanation.

The Brussels-based IFJ, which says it represents around 500,000 media workers worldwide, estimated that 289 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1993.

Accidents have killed many of the journalists, but dozens have been the victims of foul play, said John Crowfoot, an analyst with the IFJ who collaborated with Politkovskaya on one of her books.

''Journalists in Russia for the last 14 years have worked in a violent, you might say very violent, environment,'' he said.

Crowfoot also said Moscow had a poor record of finding journalists' killers, convicting people for only three out of 40 journalists' murders in the Russian capital since 1993.

The authorities have not prosecuted anybody for Politkovskaya's murder. In 2004 gunmen killed the editor of Forbes Russia Paul Klebnikov but no one has been convicted of his murder.

The congress continues until Friday. On the ground floor of the congress 215 black and white photos of journalists killed in Russia since 1993 hang in a gallery.

Reuters>