Enemies of the state?
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Despite the fall of Communism and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, human rights activists and journalists working in Russia say they still face harassment on a daily basis. They also claim that the authorities do little to tacle it.
Alexander Verkhovskiy works for the SOVA centre, which researches xenophobia and nationalism in Russia. “Neo-Nazi groups sent us death threats by email and phone. Some even came to my house,” he told Euranet.
The same groups that threatened Mr Verkhovskiy also posted his personal information on the web for all to see, and he says that despite going to the authorities, the police would not get involved.
Svetlana Gannushkina has also become a target of such groups. She works for Memorial, a group dedicated to protecting human rights. Her name was put on the hit list of an nationalist extremist group.
“My name was on a list by the Russian Will group; a list of people to be executed with our pictures, addresses and phone numbers on it. They wrote: ‘The death sentence has been passed. Let the guns speak now’,” she told us.
These threats are not idle. Many journalists and activists have been killed in the last few years, and hardly any of the murders have been solved. Notable cases include those of Gannushkina’s colleague, prominent human rights activist Natalya Estemirova who was kidnapped and murdered last year, and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was shot outside her Moscow apartment in 2006.
On a recent visit to Russia, EU Council President Herman van Rompuy said the killings of journalists and activists is “of great concern to the European public.” He also said that Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev, who has promised to get tough on human rights violators, is concerned about the “climate of impunity” created by the authorities in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus.
