Reason to Love Mr. Putin
Putin Honors a Journalist Badly Beaten After Exposés
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin has bestowed an annual state prize on a muckraking journalist who was beaten nearly to death after investigating official corruption in Khimki, a Moscow suburb. The case of the journalist, Mikhail Beketov, has become a symbol Russia’s culture of impunity.
Mr. Beketov, who suffered severe brain damage in the attack and can no longer walk or speak in sentences, was one of 10 recipients of an annual award for excellence in print journalism. Each winner receives a cash prize of one million rubles (about $32,000).
Past prizes have gone to journalists from publications that are generally supportive of the Kremlin. By giving the award to Mr. Beketov and to several other high-profile journalists who regularly criticize the government, Mr. Putin appeared to be addressing a fundamental complaint about his tenure: that it has become increasingly dangerous to challenge the authorities in print.
Mr. Beketov’s savage beating in 2008 and the lack of action in the case by state investigators have been widely reported in the Western news media and have been seen as a gauge of threats to press freedom in Russia.
Another of this year’s honorees, Sergei Parkhomenko, called the award for Mr. Beketov “absolutely cynical.”
“The people who crippled him are still free, and some of them occupy important political positions,” Mr. Parkhomenko, editor in chief of the magazine Around the World, said in an interview with the radio station Business FM.
Mr. Parkhomenko told another interviewer that he did not intend to go to the Kremlin to accept the prize.
“I am a grown man,” he said. “They cannot pull me there with a rope.”
Yevgeniya Chirikova, who worked closely with Mr. Beketov in his investigation of the planned construction of a highway through the Khimki forest, had a similar reaction.
“If the cash prize would cover all of Misha’s treatment, if it would give him back his leg and the third of his brain that has been taken from him, I would vote for it with both hands,” Ms. Chirikova said, using the common Russian nickname for Mikhail. “If this has been done to say once again, ‘Misha is great,’ to the people who built the system that crippled Misha, it’s just cynicism.”
Neither Mr. Putin nor any other government official commented on the prize announcement, which was quietly posted on a government Web site Monday night. One of Mr. Beketov’s supporters said Tuesday that doctors in the Israeli clinic where he was being treated were considering how best to tell him about the prize.
“Let’s hope this news allows him to return to his activities, and receive the prize talking and walking normally,” Lyudmila Fedotova, director of a fund for Mr. Beketov’s support, told the news agency Ria Novosti. “That would be a fairy tale.”
Prize winners are nominated by editorial offices and selected by a panel of journalists. Dmitri A. Muratov, editor of the weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said he had nominated Mr. Beketov for being the first to focus national attention on the Khimki forest. Mr. Muratov said that after Mr. Beketov emerged from a coma, with one leg amputated and his fingers smashed so badly that he could no longer type, he appeared in court in a wheelchair to answer slander charges from the mayor of Khimki, Vladimir Strelchenko.
“It’s necessary to realize this prize money is not coming from Putin’s hand or from his pocket,” Mr. Muratov said. “This is a state prize for those members of society without whom we cannot function in this country.”
The head of Russia’s Union of Journalists, Vsevolod Bogdanov, told the newspaper Kommersant that 90 percent of the prize jury had voted in Mr. Beketov’s favor. The annual prizes acknowledge journalism that “facilitates the strengthening of statehood and the spiritual development of society, increases of level of education, culture and morals of the citizens of Russia, as well as propagating fundamental human values.”
Mr. Beketov also won a 2010 press freedom award from the organization Reporters Without Borders. Two weeks ago, the top human rights specialist from the United States State Department visited Mr. Beketov’s colleagues near Khimki and promised to press the Kremlin harder on human rights.
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin has bestowed an annual state prize on a muckraking journalist who was beaten nearly to death after investigating official corruption in Khimki, a Moscow suburb. The case of the journalist, Mikhail Beketov, has become a symbol Russia’s culture of impunity.
Mr. Beketov, who suffered severe brain damage in the attack and can no longer walk or speak in sentences, was one of 10 recipients of an annual award for excellence in print journalism. Each winner receives a cash prize of one million rubles (about $32,000).
Past prizes have gone to journalists from publications that are generally supportive of the Kremlin. By giving the award to Mr. Beketov and to several other high-profile journalists who regularly criticize the government, Mr. Putin appeared to be addressing a fundamental complaint about his tenure: that it has become increasingly dangerous to challenge the authorities in print.
Mr. Beketov’s savage beating in 2008 and the lack of action in the case by state investigators have been widely reported in the Western news media and have been seen as a gauge of threats to press freedom in Russia.
Another of this year’s honorees, Sergei Parkhomenko, called the award for Mr. Beketov “absolutely cynical.”
“The people who crippled him are still free, and some of them occupy important political positions,” Mr. Parkhomenko, editor in chief of the magazine Around the World, said in an interview with the radio station Business FM.
Mr. Parkhomenko told another interviewer that he did not intend to go to the Kremlin to accept the prize.
“I am a grown man,” he said. “They cannot pull me there with a rope.”
Yevgeniya Chirikova, who worked closely with Mr. Beketov in his investigation of the planned construction of a highway through the Khimki forest, had a similar reaction.
“If the cash prize would cover all of Misha’s treatment, if it would give him back his leg and the third of his brain that has been taken from him, I would vote for it with both hands,” Ms. Chirikova said, using the common Russian nickname for Mikhail. “If this has been done to say once again, ‘Misha is great,’ to the people who built the system that crippled Misha, it’s just cynicism.”
Neither Mr. Putin nor any other government official commented on the prize announcement, which was quietly posted on a government Web site Monday night. One of Mr. Beketov’s supporters said Tuesday that doctors in the Israeli clinic where he was being treated were considering how best to tell him about the prize.
“Let’s hope this news allows him to return to his activities, and receive the prize talking and walking normally,” Lyudmila Fedotova, director of a fund for Mr. Beketov’s support, told the news agency Ria Novosti. “That would be a fairy tale.”
Prize winners are nominated by editorial offices and selected by a panel of journalists. Dmitri A. Muratov, editor of the weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said he had nominated Mr. Beketov for being the first to focus national attention on the Khimki forest. Mr. Muratov said that after Mr. Beketov emerged from a coma, with one leg amputated and his fingers smashed so badly that he could no longer type, he appeared in court in a wheelchair to answer slander charges from the mayor of Khimki, Vladimir Strelchenko.
“It’s necessary to realize this prize money is not coming from Putin’s hand or from his pocket,” Mr. Muratov said. “This is a state prize for those members of society without whom we cannot function in this country.”
The head of Russia’s Union of Journalists, Vsevolod Bogdanov, told the newspaper Kommersant that 90 percent of the prize jury had voted in Mr. Beketov’s favor. The annual prizes acknowledge journalism that “facilitates the strengthening of statehood and the spiritual development of society, increases of level of education, culture and morals of the citizens of Russia, as well as propagating fundamental human values.”
Mr. Beketov also won a 2010 press freedom award from the organization Reporters Without Borders. Two weeks ago, the top human rights specialist from the United States State Department visited Mr. Beketov’s colleagues near Khimki and promised to press the Kremlin harder on human rights.
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Mikhail Beketov, a reporter suffered severe brain damage in an unsolved attack, in 2010. |
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