The Kremlin versus the ReporterThe Kremlin versus the Reporter
By Julie A. Corwin
Next Monday - 2 October - RFE/RL journalist Andrei
Babitskii goes on trial in Makhachkala, Daghestan. After
being beaten with a truncheon, locked in the trunk of a car,
and confined to a tiny cell in a detention camp in Chechnya
last winter, Babitskii would seem a more likely plaintiff or
witness in a criminal trial - than a defendant. Officially,
his crime is using a forged passport - a passport, which he
says was forced upon him by men who kept him against his will
and transported him to the Russian border. But the real
charge against him - now and then - is quite different:
"unpatriotic journalism."
Russian President Vladimir Putin has already explained
the concept himself in an interview included in a book called
"In the First Person" released shortly before the Russian
presidential elections in March of this year. Putin asserted
that Babitskii is not a "Russian journalist," although he may
be a Russian citizen. Babitskii dared to "write that [the
Chechens] are cutting off the heads of our soldiers in order
to portray the whole horror of the war." Putin accuses
Babitskii of being sympathetic to the Chechens - "of
justifying the decapitation of people" - a traitorous stance
when Russia is at war.
According to Putin, "Russia's defeat during the first
Chechen war was to a large extent owing to the state of
society's morale. Russians did not understand what ideals our
soldiers were fighting for." Noting that during the second
"war," Russian media coverage has been much more favorable,
Putin remarks "this time around, fortunately, it's different.
[But] Babitskii and his ilk were essentially trying to
reverse the situation."
The media coverage had changed, but Babitskii, who had
covered both wars, remained the same. This time around, fewer
journalists are operating in the region. And they are not
supposed to travel unescorted or report from the Chechens'
side or interview Chechen officials. Babitskii, however,
continued going where other journalists did not: occasionally
filing reports from the side of the Chechen fighters, whom he
failed to demonize, as well as reporting from the federal
troops' side of the conflict. He reported on Chechen
commanders he believed were guilty of crimes. He reported on
civilian suffering and instances of indiscriminate bombing.
In short, he reported what he saw and heard.
Then one day - last January - Babitskii's "unpatriotic"
activities caught up with him. Just days after implicitly
contradicting a statement by Armed Forces Chief of the
General Staff Anatolii Kvashnin about Russian troops'
territorial gains in Chechnya in a report of both sides'
troop movements and after being sharply criticized by the
Russian military, Babitskii was detained by federal troops in
Grozny. They claimed at the time that he did not have the
proper accreditation. Unable to contact his family, his
employers, or a lawyer, he was confined at the Chernokozovo
detention center, where he shared a tiny cell with two other
prisoners. They slept standing up. Although he was exempted
from the torture inflicted on selected prisoners, he did get
the usual treatment afforded every newcomer: several dozen
hits on the torso with a nightstick. He and his cellmates
were also treated to occasional canisters of teargas thrown
in their direction.
Approximately two weeks later, after agreeing to be
handed over to a known Chechen field commander Atgeriev in
exchange for Russian POWs, Russian troops handed him over to
people they said were Chechen rebels but that Babitskii
insists were working for Moscow. He was then held in a closed
room for two weeks until on 23 February, he was transported
in the trunk of a car from Chechnya to Daghestan, somehow
managing to evade all federal military checkpoints. There,
both his Russian and international passports were taken from
him and he was given an Azerbaijani passport and taken to the
Azerbaijan border. He managed to convince his "escort" to
take him back to Makhachkala, where he was arrested for
carrying a false passport. After four days in a jail in
Makhachkala, he was put on a plane late one night heading
back to Moscow and released on his on recognizance pending
trial.
Six months later, Babitskii is now set to return to
North Caucasus, but not as a reporter - not to continue the
work that won him journalistic recognition from the OSCE and
the International Center for Journalists and, more important,
the respect of his fellow reporters in Chechnya - but as a
defendant. At a press conference this week, Babitskii said
that he expects a guilty verdict, if only because he "is well
acquainted with the workings of the Russian justice system."
Babitskii and his lawyer have appealed to the international
journalist community to attend the trial so that the court
process takes place in "in the glare of truth and openness."
But even if found guilty, Babitskii is unlikely to go to jail
because his case would fall under an amnesty granted by the
Russian State Duma this spring.
But he is equally unlikely to return to Chechnya to
cover that conflict in the near future. And, after hearing of
Babitskii's ordeal and witnessing his being handed over to
masked gunmen on national television, how many other
journalists are likely to follow in his footsteps? That there
may not be that many would appear to be the whole point of
this latest Kremlin campaign.
Copyright (c) 2000. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
www.rferl.org
For a detailed chronology of events in the Andrey Babitsky affair click
here, please.
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