Alexey Simonov was speaking to some 120 journalists from Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden who gathered at the Barents Press annual meeting in Apatity last weekend.
“Being a journalist in Russia is no longer just an interesting job. Sometimes journalists pay a very high price for what they report on. Over the last 10 years, none Finnish, Norwegian or Swedish journalists have been killed at work. But in the same period we have lost 16 media people only in the Republic of Dagestan,” Simonov told the audience.
He continued: “In the 90ties, many journalists were killed by people linked to different businesses. Over the last 10 years, most journalist murder cases are unsolved in the way that we still don’t know who ordered the liquidations.”
The Glasnost Defense Fund was founded in 1991 to defend the rights of journalists and to advocate freedom of the press throughout the territory of the former Soviet Union. Alexey Simonov is also a member of the Union of Russian journalists and the Moscow Helsinki Group.
Accreditation for foreign journalists reporting from inside Russia was debated at the Barents Press annual meeting.
The journalist network has recently made a call to the Prime Ministers of the Barents Region to abolish the demand for journalist accreditation. Barents Press hopes this will be included in the new declaration outlining the future of the Barents cooperation. The new, so-called Kirkenes-declaration II, will be signed in early June.
Alexey Simonov says the way the demand for accreditation is interpreted today is unlawful.
“The text in the journalist accreditation law says its aim is to help journalists to get access to information. Today, accreditation is used to hinder journalists’ access to information,” says Simonov.
“In the same way, accreditation is a way to stop foreign journalists.”
“FSB can place a foreign journalist on the PNG-list (Persona Non Grata) without having to give any reasons. Who ends up on the list and why is unknown for the public as well as for the person who suddenly find himself unwanted,” explains the chairman of the Glasnost Foundation.
