Noting Killings Of Dozens Of Independent Journalists In Russia And Calling On Russian President To Authorize Cooperation With Outside Investigators

Floor Speech

NOTING KILLINGS OF DOZENS OF INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS IN RUSSIA AND CALLING ON RUSSIAN PRESIDENT TO AUTHORIZE COOPERATION WITH OUTSIDE INVESTIGATORS -- (House of Representatives - June 18, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding, and I want to thank Ambassador Watson for being one of the cosponsors of this resolution, as well as all of those who join us today in making this collective statement to the Russians that there needs to be significant change, a reform, as to how they treat journalists.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in strong support of H. Con. Res. 151, a resolution which calls upon Russian President Putin to seek outside law enforcement assistance in investigating the unsolved murders of dozens of Russian journalists over the past decade. We also encourage President Bush to formally offer President Putin law enforcement assistance from the United States.

Most observers think, Mr. Speaker, that some Russian officials have ordered or at least connived at these murders since most of the murdered journalists were investigating government corruption or involvement in human rights abuses. There is good reason to think that people in high places are still protecting the murderers.

Mr. Speaker, Russia holds the second worst position in the world in the number of journalists killed in the last 10 years, according to the International News Safety Institute. Reporters Without Borders counts 21 murdered journalists since March of 2000. This is a conservative number. It does not include the death under extremely suspicious circumstances of Ivan Safronov. It does include the murders of Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya.

Mr. Speaker, any Member can do this, do a Google search, put in Russian journalists and murders, and you come up with one headline after another and one news story after another, usually in the Western press, of individuals being killed.

On June 15, there was a headline, ``Russian Journalist Attacked in Moscow''; May of 2005, ``Radio Journalist Badly Beaten Up''; April 21, ``Russian Reporters Get Beaten Despite Wearing Special Jackets''; April 20, ``Russian Activists Skeptical About Special Clothing For Journalists At Protests,'' they've got to wear special clothing, protective gear, to protect them from the police; April 9, ``Television Journalist Found Dead''; April 9, again, ``Critical Television Journalist Fears For His Life''; ``Photo Journalist Beaten, Injured'', on April 5; ``Journalist Assaulted During Demonstration''; and the list goes on and on and on. Sorry, Mr. Speaker, but I see a pattern, and I think other Members do as well.

Let me just say a brief word about the three journalists that all three of us are mentioning today, also delineated in the resolution, whose deaths are sadly illustrative of so many others.

Paul Klebnikov was the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes Magazine. In July 2004, he was shot to death in Moscow while investigating suspect business dealings and corruption cases.

Anna Politkovskaya was an award-winning Russian journalist and human rights activist. She wrote many articles criticizing Russian atrocities committed during the war in Chechnya. In October 2006, she was shot to death in Moscow.

Ivan Savronov reported for the Russian newspaper, Kommersant. He wrote articles criticizing the failure of Russian military programs and was planning to report on potential Russian arms sales to Iran and Syria, state sponsors of terrorism. In March of 2007, he died under suspicious circumstances, as has been recounted by both of my colleagues. He fell five stories from a window in the stairwell of his Moscow apartment building. That was no accident, Mr. Speaker. That was a murder.

None of these cases have been solved, and very few of the less famous cases have been even looked at in a meaningful way.

Many of my colleagues in this House have other concerns about human rights problems in Russia. Xenophobic violence continues throughout the Russian Federation.

People continue to disappear in Chechnya. Local officials still discriminate against non-Orthodox religion, and the rule of just law remains shaky. Of course we all care about these. But I would point out to you that a situation in which journalists can be killed with impunity is a human rights problem of a different order.

It is a human rights problem that mitigates the resolution of other human rights problems. When journalists investigating a corruption case or a human rights abuse can be killed without their killers being brought to justice, or without a convincing effort being made to do so, this intimidates and has a chilling effect on other journalists. It marks off the borders of what others know they must not investigate.

As a result, the Russian press cannot properly fulfill its function of holding officials to account. This is exactly what the killers intend.

I raised this issue recently at a hearing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. I was glad when Daniel Freed, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, acknowledged the nature of the problem and said, ``attacks on journalists, including the brutal and still unsolved murders of Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya, among others, chill and deter the fourth estate.''

Mr. Speaker, journalists fulfill an essential role in every society, and none more than those who uncover the theft of a country's assets by its elected officials or commit human rights outrages in its name. Journalists who do this at risk of their lives fully deserve to be called heroes. Make no mistake about it. These journalists knew what they were risking as they wrote and wrote and used the power of the pen to expose.

We owe it to them to raise our voice to bring the killers to justice. Mr. Putin, sadly, does not seem to be making any serious efforts to do so. Unfortunately, we have the situation as it exists today in Russia.

Only when journalists can work without fear of intimidation and death will we be able to say that we have a truly democratic Russian Government. Russian journalists, they are the watch dogs, just as they are in this country and every other country.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great conscience of Russia, said in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 1970, ``Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.''

My resolution addresses the violence of the murder of independent journalists, and the lie in the claim that their murders have been seriously investigated. Solzhenitsyn said of Communist Russia, in our country, the lie has become not just a moral category, but a killer of the state. We have to ask ourselves and ask Mr. Putin, was this terrible statement also true of post-Communist Russia?

I think we send a clear message today, and I hope Members in a bipartisan way will support this.

Finally, I just want to thank Mark Milosch and Mark Gauge for their work in helping to put this resolution together.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source