Flowers left at a Google office in China following the Jan. 12 announcement (Photo from CBC)

News of the disaster in Haiti drowned out most other concerns last week but the earthquake was not the only newsworthy thing that happened in the world. Earlier the same day as the earthquake, Google posted a surprising message on its official company blog that raised the possibility the search engine giant may leave the Chinese market rather than continue operations under oppressive Chinese censorship laws.

The announcement was the result of a cyber attack that occurred last December which among other things, resulted in proprietary knowledge being stolen from Google as well as the attempts to access the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Needless to say, the announcement has created shockwaves within the IT, business, and international policy communities as people ponder if one of these two giants - China or Google - will cave to the other or whether the world’s largest search engine company really will leave the world’s largest potential internet market.

This story is both about business and about freedom of speech. Which issue will trump the other will largely determine how the story concludes. As Henry Hoyle over on the China Blog has done an excellent job looking at business implications of the announcement as well as the Chinese reaction, this post will only concern the freedom of speech issues mentioned in the Google announcement.

Any discussion of the issue of free speech and the internet needs to first recognize the new playing field that the internet presents over traditional media. The rise of the internet has also given rise to an entirely new set of questions when it comes to free speech and censorship, many of which have not been fully decided in Western countries let alone in states that have a lower standard of free speech. For example, the issue of free speech and the internet is at the center of the current debate over “net neutrality” that is being hotly argued in the US and Europe as people become more dependent on the internet as the place to share ideas and content. But while net neutrality largely concerns the ability of internet and data providers to limit or prioritize content, internet search engines occupy an even more prominent role in the potential censorship of the web. Because unrestricted internet access allows someone to access information, images, and data on essentially any topic imaginable, traditional speech limitations frequently run up against this infinite source of information. And as people often find this content with the aid of a search engine, search engine companies like Yahoo!, Google, and MSN are central to the issue.

Many countries, including the liberal democracies of the West, rely on search engines to filter and censor results in order to comply with domestic speech laws. For example, many companies censor results in Western countries to abide by laws that prohibit child pornography, hate speech, copyright infringement or other speech limitations that are provided for by law. What makes China different from these examples is the extent of their censorship and their use of internet companies like Yahoo! to sometimes make their case against human rights activists who advocate for broader freedoms on the Mainland.

Everyone knows that to operate in China, Western companies must follow Chinese law. Unfortunately, this does include strict censorship, especially on “politically sensitive topics.” Internet companies are perhaps the most restricted under these censorship laws since the internet normally allows people to access information on basically any topic imaginable. But under Chinese censorship, sites and posts deemed inappropriate by the Chinese government are inaccessible within China. This includes topics such as Taiwan independence, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and the Dalai Lama. For a long time, entire sites like Wikipedia and YouTube were banned. Often what can be accessed depends on the current events going on in China. For example when riots broke out in Urumqi last year between Uighers and ethnic Han Chinese, the government blocked keyword searches for “Urumqi” as well as applications like Twitter and Facebook that were so effective at getting out information during the Iranian election protests just a month earlier.

But China’s grip on the internet and internet companies does not stop there. Using Chinese law, it also compels internet companies to divulge personal information about users who violate laws prohibiting government criticism.  For example, Yahoo! was found by Reporters Without Borders of providing the Chinese government with information from journalist Shin Tao’s email account that led his arrest and a ten year prison sentence in 2005 for relying information his newspaper received from the government warning about the possible social destabilization that could occur with the return of key dissidents on the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. A year later, Reporters Without Borders put out two more press releases accusing Yahoo! of cooperating with police in a manner that led to the arrest and eight year prison sentence of cyberdissident Li Zhi and the arrest and four year imprisonment of pro-democracy activist Jiang Lijun, both in 2003. The information that Yahoo! provided was in accordance with Chinese law as Yahoo! located the email servers used by the Chinese market inside China. Despite the clear human rights implications of this business decision and widespread condemnation of the company by human rights organizations around the world, Yahoo! defended its actions as the cost of doing business in China.

Many foreign internet companies that have entered China have had few hesitations about this cost. But for Google - the company whose supposed unofficial motto is “Do no evil” - the compromise was a hefty one. When Google first entered the Chinese market, it took great pains to explain its decision to self-censor google.cn and drew the line at censorship of web results. Unlike other companies like Yahoo! and MSN, Google was upfront to its Chinese users that the results were censored and did not move any of the infrastructure connected to email or personal information into the country, thereby shielding the data from Chinese laws. This compromise between profits and free speech protected the company from some of the fury human rights groups had for other American companies that kowtowed to Chinese business interests, but such protection was also limited to the conditions that Google had already laid down. The hack of the email accounts of human rights activists, information that Google went at lengths to protect from Chinese laws and officials, appears to be the final straw for Google. No longer is it a matter of adhering to local laws but protecting the company and its users from an undeniably malicious intent on the part of the government.

At least that is how Google presented the issue in its announcement last week. There are plenty of cynics who question this approach and believe that business considerations are still what is at the heart of the announcement. That may be true. But by framing it as a freedom of speech issue, Google has done more than champion itself as the better party in this dispute; it has also stood up firmly to the giant that so far no other corporation (and increasingly few Western governments) have been willing to even question.

In this regard, last week’s announcement may reinforce Google’s purported reputation as an ethically-minded company and raise the stakes for other corporations who justify human rights abuses abroad as the cost of doing business. The loyalty that many Chinese Google users feel towards the company is already linked to the small improvement that Google offered them in terms of free speech protections. If Google does leave the mainland, these users will of course find a different search engine to use. But the memory of the US corporation that officially stood up for their privacy and speech rights is bound to endure, especially since many of these users are already linked to the activist community within China.

Already, Chinese users have held vigils and left flowers and cards at various Google offices in China, thanking the company for its stand. One note of the so-called flower campaign read, “Google, the mountains can’t stop our contacts, and we’ll get over the wall [the "Great Firewall"] to find you!” The sentiment demonstrates the deep desire among some Chinese for greater speech rights. It also alludes to the ever changing nature of the internet, where the government always has to be one step ahead of tech savvy citizens with the capability to outmaneuver government censorship. One prime example: the news of the flower campaign was largely distributed on Twitter, even though the application has been blocked by the government since last June.

This is the real reason why this story is not over yet, regardless of what Google decides to do next. A popular quote from Harry Millner says, “All progress occurs because people dare to be different.” In the Google vs. China debate of the last week, it is clear that Google is daring to be different. Many of its users are daring as well. Together doing so may in time help bring down the wall of censorship that rules China today.

A couple of months ago I wrote an article for a magazine here in Brussels about Eritrea.  Eritrea is a nation struggling to come to terms with conflict, with a looming food crisis and human rights abuse.

In November, Eritrea’s dismal human rights record was put in the spotlight at the United Nations.  A month later, the UN imposed sanctions on Eritrea.

Eritrea is the promise that never materialized and of a freedom fighter turned dictator who has an iron grip on his nation.  Reporters without Borders ranks the press freedom index in Eritrea as the worst in the world….now officially worse than North Korea.

The article created some contraversy on those who defend this nation at all costs.  Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the whole gamut of refugees who’ve managed to flee, are witness.  Their testimonies cannot simply be disregarded.

Eritrea’s Ambassador to the EU, Girma Asmeron, wrote a counter-response to my piece.  This was then followed by another article from a think tank here in Brussels who defended my article.

Read it here.

This is a story not known to many Americans.  It is about a journalist, caught up in the mayhem of war, in the absurdity of all or nothing/with us or against us attitude that undermined the standing of the US in the world.

He spent seven years of his life in the custody of the US military.  He was accused, initially, of filming an interview with Osama bin Laden.  It turned out to be someone else.  He was then accused of running a jihadist website.  It didn’t exist.  Then he was accused of selling missiles to Chechen rebels.  No evidence.  Seven years, behind the chicken wire…released with no apologies, no support.

“Make no mistake, these are the most dangerous people in the world,” said at the time, President George Bush.

Today, Sami al-Hajj is once again a journalist.  He leads the human rights desk at Al Jazeera where, I suppose, he is trying to make sense of his life and recuperate seven years of his life.

A life lost at the hands of US Marines and a society where the concept of risk prevention is so ingrained that it tosses out rationale and empathy.  And in the place of rationale and empathy we find fear, anger, and an exaggerated perception that demonizes the ‘other’ and inversely, creates new risks  (for more on this see Ulrich Beck’s The Risk Society).

Cliff Stattford Smith from Reprieve was able to briefly visit Sami al-Hajj at Guantanamo in 2006.  Smith jotted down notes which were then confiscated and sent, by snail mail, to Washington.  A month later, Smith received the notes, but only those allowed by the government.

“His interrogators (at Guantanamo) wanted only to turn him into an informant against Al Jazeera,” wrote Smith in the New Statesman.

When journalists are gagged by oppressive governments then human rights abuse and the witness thereof are silenced.

Eventually the truth comes out.  And eventually this chapter of American history will go down in shame.

With the holidays coming up and getting the 2009 Year in Review together, we have been a bit light on posting. However here are some links to a few of the human rights stories from this past week.

Detained in Iran, Russia, and China

Last week NPR reported on three human rights stories from Iran, Russia, and China which are now available online. All three deal with the detention of prominent figures under less than ideal circumstances, though the most high profile of the three is likely the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Liu co-authored Charter 08, modeled after Czechoslovakia’s infamous Charter 77, which calls for greater freedoms, protection of human rights, and the introduction of democracy in China. So far the petition has gained more than 10,000 signatures and as a result, Liu is due to go on trial for subversion this Wednesday. The Pen American Center is tracking the progress of Liu’s imprisonment and trial, which is bound to garner more attention than China would like.

Back in the spotlight: The Lord’s Resistance Army and the ICC

Two new reports released by the UN High Commission for Human Rights highlight possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) against civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan. The top leaders of the LRA were indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2005 for their role in the conflict in Northern Uganda, but there has been little progress since then in bringing them to justice. Similarly, peace talks with the LRA stalled over the issue of the ICC indictments. Although the Ugandan government did an about face and asked for the indictments to be dropped in favor of a complete amnesty in exchange for peace, the ICC refused and the conflict continued in much the same fashion as it has since 1987. These new reports will inevitably bring the LRA back into the spotlight, along with the peace versus justice debate that the conflict in Northern Uganda has come to epitomize.

Guatemala: It’s never too late to make right

In a ruling released on Monday, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Guatemalan government for failing to adequately investigate and bring to justice those responsible for the 1982 Dos Erres massacre where more than 200 civilians were killed by military forces over a three day period. The Court ordered the government to pay more than $3 million in compensation to survivors and family members of those killed. Despite the fact that the massacre occurred almost three decades ago, the Court also order the Guatemalan government to carry out a legitimate investigation to identify those who had participated in the massacre and the officials who ordered it.

The Dos Erres massacre was one of many that took place during Guatemala’s 26 year long civil war, but for many became emblematic of the general conflict. Although peace talks ended the conflict in 1996, few officials have been brought to justice for their role in the violence that left a quarter million dead, many of them indigenous Maya. The ruling by the IACHR makes it clear that others in the region have not forgotten and are determined not to let Guatemala sweep its bloody past completely under the rug.

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

– The Dalai Lama

As the year closes, it is appropriate to stop to look back and see how we have progressed or regressed in the area of human rights in 2009.  The thing about human rights is that the path to progress is rarely ever a straight line; often what looks like a step back will actually allow people to take a step forward. Such may be the case with top human rights stories of this past year such as the Green Movement in Iran, healthcare rights in the US, or the climate change talks currently going on in Copenhagen. One thing is certain: there are still many challenges ahead of us in the fight for human rights. However here are some thoughts on 2009 and what to look for in 2010 from regular bloggers Nikolaj Nielsen, Jessica Corsi, and Kimberly Curtis.

Person of the Year:

It’s always difficult to pick out one person in the course of a year who stands out. What is interesting is that this year all three of us chose groups rather than a single individual as the most important persons of the year.

Nikolaj’s pick: Frontline Journalists and Human Rights Defenders

Vincent Kessler/Reuters

This past year has seen numerous journalists and human rights defenders killed or imprisoned for their work in revealing the human rights abuses.  Many of these people worked on the frontlines, risking their lives to bring the truth to the rest of the world. The importance of this work, particularly in the past year, is one of the reasons why the European Parliament awarded the Russian human rights watchdog group Memorial the prestigious Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought this past week. Although the award will do little to bring back the journalists that have been slain this past year such as the 31 Filipino journalists killed in November or Russian journalist Natalya Estemirova who was killed in July, it again highlights the high value of their work and the price that so many have paid this past year for the human rights of others.

Jessica’s pick: Reproductive Rights Leaders in the United States

Recognition should be given to the myriad leaders and activists who organized in the U.S. to make sure that reproductive rights were not left out of the historic U.S. health care reform package.  In the midst of the economic crisis and the political opening of landmark U.S. healthcare reform–reform that would finally bring the U.S. closer to the rest of the developed world in terms of providing access to health care–reproductive rights advocates became locked into a battle with religious leaders that had successfully captured political power during the George W. Bush era.  While many within the U.S. Democratic Party, including the few women Senators and congress people, were willing to give up access to reproductive health care in order to sidestep this fight, reproductive rights advocates ranging from high school and University students to seasoned lobbyists and journalists made sure to keep the spotlight on access to safe and affordable abortion.

Ben Curtis/AP

Kimberly’s pick: Ordinary people coming together

From the record-setting attendance on the National Mall for Barack Obama’s inauguration to crowds of people in Berlin that marked the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it seems that 2009 was all about ordinary people coming together.  Some of these crowds celebrated change, while others such as those in Iran and Guinea came together to fight for their rights, often with grisly consequences. The predicted potential of virtual social networking seemed to finally be realized as people used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to not just talk about the latest developments in their social lives with friends, but communicate real information to the rest of the world about what was happening in their countries.  Although revolution did not happen in many of these places, 2009 showed that the power of the people is still alive and well in the 21^st century.

Most Unexpected Event:

Both Jessica and Nikolaj picked the same event: Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As the highest honor awarded in the humanitarian field, many around the world were surprised that he was awarded the prize before achieving any significant feats on the international stage.

But as Jessica notes, there were other reasons why the award was surprising:  Many claim that President Barack Obama

Bjorn Sigurdson/AP

was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to express international support for the U.S.’ reengagement with multilateral peace efforts, including efforts to bring an end to wars in Iraq and elsewhere. Another reason for the award might have been his policy of re-engagement with Muslim nations.  What was so surprising about this award was its timing.  It was given before the U.S. had fully elaborated withdrawal timelines and procedures for ending its wars, and after it had engaged in some decidedly unpeaceful and certainly unexpected military operations, such as the September 14 assassination of a suspected terrorist by U.S. Special Forces helicopters in southern Somalia.  If the prize is read as an indication of global sentiment for substantial changes in U.S. foreign policy, as opposed to a congratulations for actions that have already been taken, it comes as less of a surprise.

Kimberly chose the obvious event that has been written about on several other blogs: the Iranian election protests. Although Iranians overthrew the Shah in massive protests more than 30 years ago, Iran is not really known for street action due to the oppressive policies that the government is notorious for. That is one of the reasons why the post-election protests took so many by surprise. It’s also why the results of the protests - killings, arrests, prisoner abuses, and kangaroo courts - were not surprising at all. Still, there is a reason why most of the world was engrossed with the protests while they took place: whether you like it or not, Iran is an important regional power and will continue to be so. The post-election protests, while not a revolution, definitely altered the course of Iranian politics and will almost certainly be viewed in hindsight as the start of an important new chapter in Iranian history, hopefully one that gives more credence to human rights and the will of the people.

What to Watch for in 2010:

Kimberly’s predictions:

The general trend of using international law and universal jurisdiction to hold individuals accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity will continue as the International Criminal Court becomes more prominent and takes on new cases. However because justice is a retroactive approach to human rights abuses, there will also be increasing pressure on prescriptive action as well. In light of this and Obama’s Nobel lecture, the debate over the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) is due for a revival. Only this time around, corporations will also be brought into the fold as their actions in conflict zones and with oppressive regimes will be increasingly scrutinized.

Jessica’s predictions:

Economic and social rights, legal entitlements for the poor: Poverty, increasing and deep, will continue to plague us for years due to the global recession.  As a result, we’re likely to see an increased focus on Economic and Social rights, such as the right to work, the right to fair remuneration, the right to food, and the right to health and healthcare.  Increased poverty will also refocus efforts around legal entitlements for the poor such as land ownership and community ownership of natural resources.

Climate justice: Climate justice will gain traction as the poor nations and poorest peoples of the world become better legally equipped and politically organized to hold everyone from corporations to governments accountable for the effects of climate change and pollution.  As a result we will see increased legal accountability for non-state actors.

Increasing legal accountability for State action during conflict: Powerful governments such as the US and the UK will be held more responsible than ever for violations of human rights during conflict, a trend helped in part by the increasing power of the International Criminal Court.  For example, a Milan Court convicted and sentenced 23 former CIA agents for the abduction of a Muslim cleric and rendition practices.  This trend of conviction in national courts will continue.

Anti-Muslim sentiments: Anti-Muslim racism and tension between the “Muslim world” and “the rest” will continue in the short and medium term, leading to more human rights violations, claims, court decisions, and policy developments on everything from religious clothing to state conducted or supported torture that was motivated by a person’s Islamic affiliations.

The mainstreaming of LGBT rights: LGBT rights will continue to become more mainstreamed in the global North.  We will witness expanded recognition of gay marriage and related civil rights and family law claims such as child custody and health care rights.

Last Sunday, Swiss voters opted to legally ban the construction of any new minarets in the country.  Since then, the topic has been debated online and in the media, with plenty of analysis by people on both sides of the ban on what the minaret ban is really about, or what minarets are really about.  Despite the opinions offered on these questions, it is clear that last weekend’s vote put Switzerland front and center on the question of what modern Europe is really about.

Historically, Europe has always had a problem with the “other” aspect of their societies.  While the most blatant examples of this can be found with anti-Semitism, whether it be the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain or the Shoah, other groups have faced their fair share of discrimination and mistreatment due to their perceived non-Europeaness.  Such treatment continues today, as seen with the Czech government’s admission that Romani women are still being forcibly sterilized and the continuing anti-Semitism detailed by Ben Moscovitch in his blog post today.  Islamophobia is also part of this trend, and has been growing since 2001.  Although such fear may be part of human nature, it also should have no institutionalized place in Europe today.

In addition to bans on headscarves and minarets, there has been a substantial increase in violence against Muslims across Europe, but also a reluctance on the part of police forces and governments to address the problem.  Doing so essentially says to European Muslims, “You have rights, but don’t depend on us to uphold them.”  Similarly, the ban on minarets (and headscarves for that matter) essentially says, “We tolerate your religion, as long as we never have to see any sign of it.”  Unsurprisingly, this does not come as a comfort to many European Muslims and falls far short of the human rights norms of equality and freedom of expression that European countries love to proclaim.  It also creates a cycle of exclusion, which ultimately leads to the creation of two communities - the us and them, the included and the excluded, the haves and have-nots - with no bridges in between.

That is why the minaret ban is central to the question of what Modern Europe is really about, though the answer to the question is not yet clear.  In a way, the vote on minarets does pose traditional European values against something, though it is not really Islam and it is not the traditional values that anyone should be eager to preserve.  Instead, it squares them off against the modern values that Europe molded from the lessons it supposedly learned from the Holocaust and the Cold War.  The election asked Swiss voters to choose between traditional exclusion and tolerance of diversity; this time around, the voters went with tradition over progress.  The general trend across Europe has been the same.  However, it is still early in the debate.  Hopefully, the attention that the Minaret Ban is getting in the media will encourage people to look at the reasons for their prejudice, and start a constructive dialogue with the same people they have been trying to exclude rather than continue on with the regular status quo.

Elections are events that always garner attention. Whether its to see how a particular politician will fare, what direction a country may be headed with its policies, or as a barometer of corruption, elections are covered by the world media regardless of where they occur. Unfortunately, there are places where election coverage can only achieve negative coverage, where politics is a dangerous national exercise no matter which side you are on.

Such is the case in the Philippines, where last week at least 57 people were massacred by gunmen as they traveled to file candidacy papers for a provincial election next year. The primary politician involved, Ismael Mangudadatu, had received death threats when he announced his plans to run in the 2010 election. So he sent a convoy of journalists and relatives, including his wife and two sisters, to file his candidacy papers for him. On Monday that convoy was stopped by armed gunmen and its occupants killed at the side of the road. Further investigation showed that many of the women were sexually mutilated before being buried in shallow graves near by. Violence is a common element in politics in a country that ranks as one of the most dangerous in the world for journalists, but last week’s massacre shocked even those who have come to accept election-related violence as normal.

While international observers condemn the violence and the Philippine government rushes to bring those responsible to justice (or at least appear that they are doing so), the larger questions of what happened still remain. Similar to the 2007 election violence in Kenya, though more brutal than normal the event itself was not uncommon. In Kenya, at least 1300 people were killed and nearly 600,000 displaced before the world started to pay attention to the cycle of corruption and violence that defined Kenyan presidential elections.

That attention has led to a formal investigation by the International Criminal Court that will likely result in the prosecution of some key politicians who coordinated the violence. Yet the investigation of the ICC is a bit like trying to fix the problem by placing a band-aid on a gunshot wound; while it will remove from the scene some key players from this past election cycle, it doesn’t address the underlying culture that allowed the violence to occur around the 2007 election (as well as the elections in 1992, 1997, and 2001), and will likely do nothing but make some people feel better about the situation in the meantime.

The Philippines finds itself in the same situation. It is undoubtedly important to investigate last week’s massacre and prosecute those responsible, but the massacre is just one incident in a long history of politically related violence. Only by taking a holistic approach and addressing the underlying culture of impunity that allows this violence to occur will there be any significant change to the situation. Until then, the political rights enshrined in the country’s constitution and international instruments such as the Convention on Civil and Political Rights will mean little, as the exercise of those rights will still require people to risk their lives.

This is not an easy task, and requires the cooperation of many adverse parties for the benefit of the whole. However, courage can count for a lot too. Ismael Mangudadatu, whose potential candidacy was the reason for the violence, refused to back down. On Friday he went ahead and filed his candidacy papers that will allow him to run for governor next year. In doing so, he stood up not only for his interests, but for the interests of all his countrymen, regardless of political affiliation.

One can only hope that the powers that be in the Philippines can find that same courage in the near future.

Eritrea’s ambassador to the European Union, Girma Asmerom, was conspicuously absent. The Europe External Policy Advisors’ moderator had assured everyone that the invite was sent. In an interview published in the September/October issue of the Courier ACP, the ambassador claimed his country to be the most stable in the whole of Africa. But his seat remained empty at the Brussels conference for the promotion of peace and human rights in Eritrea.

The Eritrean nation’s short legacy of attrition and torture could no longer simply be ignored. And yet, polemics and controversy hovered among the participants. The presence of ambassadors from Sudan, Djibouti and, of course, Ethiopia stirred sentiments among the Eritrean freedom fighters, one former US ambassador to Eritrea, Human Rights Watch and numerous civil society organisations and academics.

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Anna Politkovsakaya’s son, Ilya, remained silent after the projection of the documentary on his mother.  He was there, sitting with Sergei Sokolov, the deputy editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta.  The gathered asked questions.

The curious stared at this young man.  A security camera had caught the moment of her death.  The gunman, wearing a baseball cap, slipped in behind her.  He turns a corner and we hear the two shots.  Ilya, too, was watching this unfold in a small projection at the European Parliament.

‘Russians don’t know anything about Russia,’ said Mr. Sokolov.  Novaya Gazeta is one of the last independent newspapers in Russia.  Everything else, aside from the international press titles available in the largest cities, are state run.

‘Our journalists are dissapearing.  We’ve had to stop discussing Chechnya,’ he said.  Five Novaya Gazeta journalists have been killed.  Death threats are common. A 19 year old intern with the paper had been tossed from a train.  He had also received death threats - all within one week of starting at the paper said Mr. Sokolov.

According to the editor, the Russian mentality is enslaved with a fascination that revolves around a cult of personality.  Putin personifies that new personality where impunity and concentrated power are the norm.  To stand apart, to demonstrate and express independent thought, has become an extremely dangerous affair.

‘A lack of media attention on the real image of Russian contributed to Anna Politkovsakaya’s death. Those with courage to write the truth are targets,’ said Mr. Sokolev.

Natalya Estemirova’s body was found on June 15th of this year.  The award winning journalist and human rights defender was getting too close to the truth.  She paid for it with two bullets.

In Chechnya and indeed elsewhere in that wide expanse of impunity (see Dagestan and Russia), Estemirova was finding hard evidence of Chechnya’s state sanctioned torture. She connected the murders with those responsible. She worked for Memorial, a Russian organization whose main task - among others - was to preserve the memory of abuse incurred under the heavy hand of a Soviet empire.

Memorial has since been awarded Europe’s Sakharov Prize for the Freedom of Thought.  The prize is awarded each year by the European Parliament and seeks to honor those with the courage to face down intolerance, fanaticism and oppression.