Magomedzagid Varisov

Secrecy, indifference, conflicts mar investigations into journalist deaths. Moscow has a responsibility to uphold the rule of law. Its international partners have an obligation, too.

Journalists have been silenced for covering Chechnya and its neighboring republics, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Opaque investigations into the killings have fed deep skepticism.

Nina Ognianova, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, provided testimony to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on the pressing issue of impunity in journalist murders in Russia. The commission held a hearing this week on Russia's human rights record. A transcript of the testimony follows:

Thirteen journalists have been killed in contract style murders since Russian President Vladimir Putin took office, according to reporting by the Committee to Protect Journalists. No one has been brought to justice in any of the slayings.

Violent Censorship By Ann Cooper The Moscow Times www.themoscowtimes.com

RUSSIA

President Vladimir Putin and his allies continued to expand control
over the media, using methods that critics called reminiscent of the Soviet era. Journalists who took on powerful political or business interests sometimes paid with their lives. Two journalists were killed in 2005 for their reporting. In the five years since Putin took power, 12 journalists have been killed in contract-style slayings. None of the killers have been brought to justice.

e, the relatives and colleagues of journalists murdered in Russia, along with Russian and international press freedom advocates, who convened for a conference in Moscow on July 7, 2005, declare the following:

The lack of progress in investigating journalist murders undermines freedom and democracy in Russia, and demonstrates the lawlessness and impunity with which Russian and international media can be targeted.

New York, June 30, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder late Tuesday of Magomedzagid Varisov, a prominent journalist and political analyst, who was gunned down in a contract-style assassination in Makhachkala, capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan.