The Moscow theater hostage crisis was the seizure of a crowded Dubrovka Theater by 40 to 50 armed Chechens on 23 October 2002 that involved 850 hostages and ended with the death of at least 170 people. The attackers, led by Movsar Barayev, claimed allegiance to the Islamist separatist movement in Chechnya. They demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and an end to the Second Chechen War.
Ostankino Tower is a television and radio tower in Moscow, Russia, owned by the Moscow branch of unitary enterprise Russian TV and Radio Broadcasting Network. Standing 540.1 metres (1,772 ft), Ostankino was designed by Nikolai Nikitin. It is currently the tallest free-standing structure in Europe and 11th tallest in the world. Between 1967 and 1974 it was the tallest in the world. The tower was the first free-standing structure to exceed 500 m (1,600 ft) in height. Ostankino was built to mark the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. It is named after the surrounding Ostankino district of Moscow.
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the USSR's Committee of State Security (KGB). Its main responsibilities are within the country and include counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and surveillance as well as investigating some other types of grave crimes and federal law violations. It is headquartered in Lubyanka Square, Moscow's centre, in the main building of the former KGB. According to the 1995 Federal Law "On the Federal Security Service", direction of the FSB is executed by the president of Russia, who appoints the Director of FSB.
Memorial is a Russian historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in Russia and other post-Soviet states.
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in its country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs.
Zubr was a civic youth organization in Belarus backed and funded by the United States and western powers in opposition to President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The organization drew inspiration from Otpor! student movement which contributed to the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in 2000, and from Gene Sharp's writings on nonviolent action. Zubr became noticed internationally in 2005 when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was visiting Lithuania, met their leaders –, who risked imprisonment upon their return. Some reporters have credited Zubr's leaders with the idea of a 'Denim Revolution', which, they hoped would attract popular support as Ukraine's Orange Revolution and Georgia's Rose Revolution. But, Lukashenko had said:“In our country, there will be no pink or orange, nor even a banana revolution.”
The Moscow News, which began publication in 1930, was Russia's oldest English-language newspaper. Many of its feature articles used to be translated from the Russian language Moskovskiye Novosti.
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, writer, and human rights activist who reported on political events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005).
The Press Trust of India Ltd., commonly known as PTI, is the largest news agency in India. It is headquartered in New Delhi and is a nonprofit cooperative among more than 500 Indian newspapers and has more than 1,000 full-time employees, as of 22 January 2016. It employs over 400 journalists and 500 part-time correspondents located in most of the district headquarters in the country. A few correspondents are based in major capitals and important business centres around the world. It took over the operations of the Associated Press of India from Reuters after India's independence in 1947. It provides news coverage and information of the region in both English and Hindi. Its corporate office is located at Sansad Marg, New Delhi and registered office in D N Road, Mumbai.
Dmitry Yuryevich Kholodov was a Russian journalist who investigated corruption in the military and was assassinated on 17 October 1994 in Moscow. His assassination was the first of many killings of journalists in Russia.
Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (UCSJ) is a non-governmental organization that reports on the human rights conditions in countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, exposing hate crimes and assisting communities in need. UCSJ uses grassroots-based monitoring and advocacy, as well as humanitarian aid, to protect the political and physical safety of Jewish people and other minorities in the region. UCSJ is based in Washington, D.C., and is linked to other organizations such as the Moscow Helsinki Group. It has offices in Russia and Ukraine and has a collegial relationship with human rights groups that were founded by the UCSJ in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
A Chronicle of Current Events was one of the longest-running samizdat periodicals of the post-Stalin USSR. The unofficial publication reported violations of civil rights and judicial procedure by the Soviet government and responses to those violations by citizens across the Soviet Union. Appearing first in April 1968, it soon became the main voice of the Soviet human rights movement, inside the country and abroad.
Russia incurred much international criticism for its conduct during the Second Chechen War, which started in 1999. The governments of the United States and other countries condemned deaths and expulsions among civilians. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNHCR) passed two resolutions in 2000 and 2001 condemning human rights violations in Chechnya and requiring Russia to set up an independent national commission of inquiry to investigate the matter. However, a third resolution on these lines failed in 2004. The Council of Europe in multiple resolutions and statements between 2003 and 2007 called on Russia to cease human rights violations. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) between 2005 and 2007 conducted legal cases brought by Chechens against the Russian government, and in many of these cases held Russia responsible for deaths, disappearances and torture.
Boris Vladimirovich Stomakhin is a Russian radical political activist, and editor of "Radical politics" periodical. He was convicted three times for hate speech, advocating a dismemberment of Russian Federation and genocide against Russian people. The convictions have been questioned by human rights organizations ARTICLE 19, Committee to Protect Journalists, and Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.
Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within is a book written by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky. The authors describe the Russian apartment bombings as a false flag operation that was guided by the Russian Federal Security Service to justify the Second Chechen War and bring Vladimir Putin to power. The story was initially printed by Yuri Shchekochikhin in a special issue of Novaya Gazeta in August 2001 and published as a book in 2002. In Russia the book was prohibited because it divulged state secrets, and it was included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials. However, it was published in more than twenty other countries and translated into twenty languages.
Author and publisher Valery Nikolaevich Chalidze was a Soviet dissident and human rights activist, deprived of his USSR citizenship in 1972 while on a visit to the US.
Alexander Pinkhosovich Podrabinek is a Russian journalist and commentator. During the Soviet period he was a human rights activist, being exiled, then imprisoned in a corrective-labour colony, for publication of his book Punitive Medicine in Russian and in English.
The Samashki massacre was an incident which occurred on April 7–8, 1995, in the village of Samashki, at the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. Numerous villagers died at the hands of Russian paramilitary troops, many of them reportedly drunk or drugged, under the command of Gen. Anatoly Kulikov. The incident attracted wide attention in Russia and abroad.
The media of Russia refers to mass media outlets based in the Russian Federation. The media of Russia is diverse, with a wide range of broadcast and print outlets available to the consumers. Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. The Constitution of Russia guarantees freedom of speech. As a country in transition, Russia's media system is under transformation.
Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova was a Russian human rights activist and board member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial. Estemirova was abducted by unknown persons on 15 July 2009 around 8:30 a.m. from her home in Grozny, Chechnya, as she was working on "extremely sensitive" cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya. Two witnesses reported they saw Estemirova being pushed into a car shouting that she was being abducted. Her remains were found with bullet wounds in the head and chest area at 4:30 p.m. in woodland 100 metres (330 ft) away from the federal road "Kavkaz" near the village of Gazi-Yurt, Ingushetia.
