Russian Officials Using Selective Prosecutions for ‘Discrediting Army’ to Punish and Force Closure of Local Papers

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 7 – Russian officials are prosecuting some local papers for publishing materials for supposedly “discrediting the army” that they have not prosecuted others for publishing, a sign that these prosecutions are now being used more to suppress independent outlets than to enforce the law.

            Sergey Fedorov, editor of Vizit, a newspaper in the Sakhalin town of Kholmsk, says that he finds it hard to understand how his outlet could be fined 200,000 rubles (3300 US dollars) for publishing something that had already been published elsewhere without any problem. But that is what has happened.

            But it is obvious that the local authorities who have never liked the paper because of its exposes about corruption among local officials have found the Russian law about “discrediting the army” a useful tool in their efforts to shutter the paper (sibreal.org/a/na-sahaline-gazetu-oshtrafovali-za-antivoennuyu-statyu-yavlinskogo/31973274.html).

            Fedorov says that his paper has appealed once but won’t appeal again because it lacks the resources to do so and any confidence that the courts would give it relief. As a result, the paper, which was created in 1993, may not survive to mark its 30^th anniversary next year, the editor suggests.

            At one time, the paper sold as many as 12,000 copies, but now because the population of the town has collapsed, businesses have closed and stopped advertising, and the number of people who can afford to buy a paper has fallen so far, its print run is down to 2,000 and its size cut from 48 pages to 16 with little prospect it will ever recover.

            The paper doesn’t have an online presence. It has tried but its sites have been blocked; and it lacks the money to put another one up. But it does enjoy support from its remaining readers. They have given the paper 90 percent of the money it needs to pay the current fines, but Fedorov fears the powers will only impose new ones to kill the paper.

            The editor says that he can only hope for eventual rehabilitation just as some of those condemned in 1937 have. But he expresses the hope that “we won’t have to wait as long.”