Nemtsov's Daughter Chased out of Russia

From BBC Europe

Zhanna Nemtsova has been working as a TV journalist
for an independent TV station in Moscow

A daughter of murdered Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has accused pro-Kremlin media of spreading hateful propaganda, and says she has left Russia to live in exile.

Zhanna Nemtsova told the BBC that she had received threats, and this was one of the reasons behind her departure.

In a newspaper column, she said Russian propaganda echoed the era of genocide in Nazi Germany and Rwanda.

Mr Nemtsov, a leading Kremlin critic, was shot dead in Moscow in February.

Five suspects have been arrested over the killing, all of them from the Russian republic of Chechnya. However, the investigation has not established who ordered the murder, and one of the suspects has said he was forced to make a confession.

Several critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin have left the country over the last few years, complaining of intimidation and authoritarianism.

A close friend of Mr Nemtsov, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was admitted to hospital with acute kidney failure last month. Doctors have not established a cause and his father told the BBC he suspected poisoning.

Mourners pay tribute to Boris Nemtsov in Moscow on 7 March 2015
Boris Nemtsov was murdered as he walked along a bridge in central Moscow

In a column for business daily Vedomosti, Ms Nemtsova said state-controlled media in Russia had contributed to her father's death by labelling him and other opposition leaders "traitors".

She accused pro-Kremlin journalists of spreading hatred and intolerance, and urged the West to impose sanctions against those involved.

"Many of the texts of Kremlin-controlled media recall the rhetoric of African propagandists," she wrote.

"Putin's information machine - similar to those in Nazi Germany and Rwanda - is using criminal methods of propaganda, and sowing hatred which generates violence and terror."

Absolutely Brilliant Essay on Ukraine and Russia

My Ukraine 

A personal reflection on a nation's dream of independence and the nightmare Vladimir Putin has visited upon it. Chrystia Freeland

Chrystia Freeland

Chrystia Freeland is a journalist, author, and politician. She was a stringer in Ukraine, deputy editor of The Globe and Mail, and has held positions at the Financial Times ranging from Moscow bureau chief to U.S. managing editor. She wrote this essay for The Brookings Institute.

She has Ukrainian heritage and speaks both Ukrainian and Russian. She frequently visits both countries, er, well, not so much Russia anymore.

Banned from Russia

On March 24 last year, I was in my Toronto kitchen preparing school lunches for my kids when I learned from my Twitter feed that I had been put on the Kremlin's list of Westerners who were banned from Russia. This was part of Russia's retaliation for the sanctions the United States and its allies had slapped on Vladimir Putin's associates after his military intervention in Ukraine.

For the rest of my grandparents' lives, they saw themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine.

Four days earlier, nine people from the U.S. had been similarly blacklisted, including John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Harry Reid, then the majority leader of the Senate, and three other senators: John McCain, a long-time critic of Putin, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Dan Coats of Indiana, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany. “While I'm disappointed that I won't be able to go on vacation with my family in Siberia this summer,” Coats wisecracked, “I am honored to be on this list.”

I, however, was genuinely sad to be barred from Russia. I think of myself as a Russophile. I speak the language and studied the nation's literature and history in college. I loved living in Moscow in the mid-nineties as bureau chief for the Financial Times and have made a point of returning regularly over the subsequent fifteen years.

Ukraine roots

I'm also a proud member of the Ukrainian-Canadian community. My maternal grandparents fled western Ukraine after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939. They never dared to go back, but they stayed in close touch with their brothers and sisters and their families, who remained behind. For the rest of my grandparents' lives, they saw themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine, which had last existed, briefly, during and after the chaos of the 1917 Russian Revolution. That dream persisted into the next generation, and in some cases the generation after that.

My late mother moved back to her parents' homeland in the 1990s when Ukraine and Russia, along with the thirteen other former Soviet republics, became independent states. Drawing on her experience as a lawyer in Canada, she served as executive officer of the Ukrainian Legal Foundation, an NGO she helped to found.

My mother was born in a refugee camp in Germany before the family immigrated to western Canada. They were able to get visas thanks to my grandfather's older sister, who had immigrated between the wars. Her generation, and an earlier wave of Ukrainian settlers, had been actively recruited by successive Canadian governments keen to populate the vast prairies of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

Today, Canada's Ukrainian community, which is 1.25 million-strong, is significantly larger as a percentage of total population than the one in the United States, which is why it is also a far more significant political force. And that in turn probably accounts for the fact that while there were no Ukrainian-Americans on the Kremlin's blacklist, four of the thirteen Canadians singled out were of Ukrainian extraction: in addition to myself, my fellow Member of Parliament James Bezan, Senator Raynell Andreychuk, and Paul Grod, who has no national elective role, but is head of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

I made the Russian list of the unwelcome as a three-fer: an activist Ukrainian-Canadian, a politician (I was elected to Parliament in 2013 to represent Toronto Centre), and a journalist with a long paper trail that frequently displeased the Kremlin, since I covered Moscow's brutal war in Chechnya in the 1990s and also wrote a book about the rise of the Russian oligarchs. I interviewed Putin himself in 2000, shortly after he took over as president. When, in 2011, he decided to take the presidency back from his protégé, Dmitry Medvedev, I wrote a column in The New York Times arguing that Putin's Russia was on its way to becoming a full-fledged dictatorship that would eventually be vulnerable to a popular uprising.

Until March of last year, none of this prevented my getting a Russian visa. I was, on several occasions, invited to moderate panels at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Kremlin's version of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Then, in 2013, Medvedev agreed to let me interview him in an off-the-record briefing for media leaders at the real Davos annual meeting.

That turned out to be the last year when Russia, despite its leadership's increasingly despotic and xenophobic tendencies, was still, along with the major Western democracies and Japan, a member in good standing of the G-8. Russia in those days was also part of the elite global group Goldman Sachs had dubbed the BRICs — the acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China — the emerging market powerhouses that were expected to drive the world economy forward. Putin was counting on the $50 billion extravaganza of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics to further solidify Russia's position at the high table of the international community. And then....

Please go to the Brookings page to read the rest of this extremely informative and interesting essay. There are many photos and links to explore. 

Putin Extends Control over 'Independent' Media

Putin pledges state support for independent mass media

President Vladimir Putin (C) attending the Second Media Forum of independent regional and local mass media, "Truth and Justice", sponsored by the Russian Popular Front at the Lenexpo Exhibition Center in St.Petersburg, April 28, 2015. (RIA Novosti / Alexei Druzhinin)

RT
The Russian president has told the participants of a major media forum that society was interested in the development of independent mass media, and the state would lend support to both government-owned and private companies in this sphere.

Vladimir Putin made this statement on Tuesday as he spoke before the media-forum of the United Popular Front, a political support organization made up of those who support the president’s policies, but choose not to join any political party.

One of the journalists participating in the event complained that the private company he worked for had difficulties in competing with state-owned mass media, as the latter received help from the authorities in the form of low office rent, subsidized transport and computers, and even subsidies for staff wages. “We are surviving on our own during the crisis and we have found ourselves in completely non-market conditions,” the reporter complained.

“If we take a formal position it is all right for the state to pay for its own organizations, but society as a whole is also unconditionally interested in the development of the independent sector in mass media,” Putin answered. “We must develop the system of support that would help everyone,” he added.

"Your job is to ensure that the problems that exist everywhere in our country be resolved in a civilized fashion," Putin told reporters, noting that otherwise the potential for public protest could grow and suddenly erupt in an unpredictable fashion. "I would like to thank you for doing your job right. As I was listening to you I thought: who would dare say we don't have free media?" he added.

Ah, that would be me! My first thought is to say, "Don't do it!" Don't allow the government to be the difference between a successful operation and a marginal one. Once that happens, you are owned by the government.

My second thought was, "What"? "Your job is to ensure that the problems that exist everywhere in our country be resolved in a civilized fashion,". In other words, don't stir up controversy regardless of the injustices occurring. Don't say anything that would cause people to doubt the sincerity of the government. That's your job! But that does not remotely resemble a free media.

However, the Russian leader noted that it was important to prevent abuse of mass media by various forces. “We must surely push for the situation when no one would even attempt to use the mass media to achieve some business ends or any other interests not connected with the objectives of society or the regions,” Putin said. That is, not connected to government objectives. No competition for the oligarchs.

He also criticized the media outlets that allowed an excessive amount of advertising. “Print media must not be simply a spot for ads, they must carry useful information,” he said.

Russian bloggers have responsibilities of mass media but few of the rights

Aleksey Kazakov noted that after the adoption of the legislative amendments concerning bloggers in August 2014, the latter received additional responsibilities, but gained scarcely any additional rights.

The current Russian law orders the authors of all blogs and social media accounts with 3,000 daily readers or more to register with the state watchdog Roskomnadzor, disclose their real identities, verify the information before making it public and abstain from releasing reports containing slander, hate speech, extremist calls or other banned information such as, for example, advice on suicide. Also, the law bans popular bloggers from using obscene language.

Violations of the law carry administrative responsibility and are punishable with fines.