The practice of silence

Removing from the air of NTV the plot about the abductions of people in Chechnya on Sunday, October 30, resulted in a real media scandal. All Monday news agencies replicated him as one of the main news of the day. The material on this subject turned out to be the most readable on the Russian-language page "BBC". By the evening, the plot lined with YouTube was watched by about 53 thousand people. All the main newspapers managed to unsubscribe to Tuesday. No, not only such publications as Kommersant, in principle, do not stop the Chechen theme. Even Minkin in the “Moscow Komsomolets” complained about the infringement of freedom of speech and the inability to “show the truth” on television. Only the lazy did not write about it.

It would be far from the first time unpleasant power to remove the plot from federal channels. Sometimes they just do not allow on the air. It was such a fate on Channel One that in January of this year, the story of the death of Vanya Zavyalov in the program “Let them talk”: on a six -year -old boy in St. Petersburg fell from the roof of an ice block; The plot ready for exit on the air was blocked without explanation (by the way, almost a year earlier, in March 2010, the first channel did not miss the material about the winter “communal disasters” in St. Petersburg - and he might have pushed the city authorities to fight huge icicles and other “transformations” of the harsh climate a little earlier).

Sometimes, as last Sunday, they manage to show problem material in the Far East and the Urals, and then - as a cow licked with her tongue. Once - and no. And the audience of the European part of Russia can also be entertained by an elongated advertising pause. Remember, in February, on Channel One and on NTV, journalists were perplexed, why the release with Volochkova, shocking ballerina, unexpectedly healed by the critic of "United Russia", was shown only in the eastern regions, but not in the center? There have been a long time to talk about more long and socially significant cases of “removal from the show”: over the past 10 years there have been a lot of them. But it is a sin not to mention at least Andrei Loshak’s report about the resettlement of the Moscow Center “Now the Office” , which Muscovites themselves were able to familiarize themselves only on the Internet.

It seemed that everyone was already accustomed to this practice - both the audience and the press. But the limit should once come to patience, and the Chechen Saga seemed to be the last straw. Not because, of course, that it was about Chechnya. Although, against the backdrop of the recent news of the popular celebration of the thirty -five years of the Chechen leader with the participation of Hollywood and Russian pop and cinema stars, this material could not but interest ... rather because it simply got it. However, let's start first.

The scandalous plot revolves around the case of Islam Umarpashaev. When in December 2009 he was abducted by employees of the Chechen police (then not the police), Islam was 24 years old. For about four months he spent the chained to the battery in the basement on the basis of riot police of the Chechen Republic. At first he was beaten, even tortured by electric shock. They wanted to get information about the militants. But Islam could not tell anything good-all his personal subversive activity was reduced to a swearing on the “cops” in the Internet chat (he, in fact, came across this). So pretty soon the “special methods of influence” to the “prisoner of the dungeon” riot police ceased to apply. He was fed, once a week was taken to wash and ... even kindly explained that when the beard and hair grow properly, they would make him a “suicide bomber”. For the disclosure of terrorist attacks, law enforcement officers receive good bonuses from the Chechen leaders, and Islam, as he tells, was supposed to “destroy the May holidays while trying to self -break, on the anniversary of the death of Akhmad Kadyrov, the father of the current head of the Chechen Republic.

There were a lot of such people who were stolen by the “Kadyr” security forces, and then killed allegedly with weapons in their hands or explosives on the belt, in recent years in Chechnya there were a lot. Islam he himself listened to more than enough than enough than enough, and almost reconciled with his fate. But he was lucky. His desperate relatives turned to a combined mobile group of human rights organizations in Chechnya.

SMG was formed a few months after the abduction and murder, probably the most famous Chechen activist, employee of Memorial Natasha Estemirova. Natasha worked in extremely dangerous affairs - she was engaged in cases of abductions and murders, in which the “Kadyrovites” were involved, betrayed their publicity, led journalists to victims and witnesses, persuaded relatives of the dead, who disappeared, unlawfully condemned to achieve justice, appeal to the European Court of Human Rights ... When Natasha did not, such human rights work in Chechnya for a while, it seemed, seemed to froze. It was too dangerous for local civil activists to engage in these matters ... Yes, what is dangerous? Judging by what happened to Natasha, former suicide ... And then, on the initiative of the organization “Committee against torture”, human rights activists from other regions of the country, mainly lawyers, began to go to Chechnya in groups of three people, to work there, replacing each other, to literally look for those residents of the republic who dare to file an official complaint about the actions of the Kadyrov structures, and to see them to seek off.

Today in Chechnya people are literally paralyzed by fear. If the parents are killed by their son, they are usually silent. If they are tortured, if they are put on trial in a fabricated case, they are also silent. After all, you will begin to complain, the same criminals or their colleagues will come to you, beat up, take one of the relatives ...

Now in the republic they are ready to speak and ask for help in fact in only one situation - if a person after abduction disappears without a trace.

Then relatives cannot but look, knock on each door, use any opportunity to save the missing or at least find out about his fate, at least get the body if he died.

So relatives of Islam Umarpashaev came to the mobile group. They just did not know where to go. Lawyers from the SMG promoted the case, filled the law enforcement agencies with requests, filed a complaint with the European court ... “Urgent questions” rained up from Strasbourg to the Russian leadership, they were “lowered” from the federal level to Chechnya ... local investigators needed to at least depict the appearance of activity, rust and rusticated, began to “disturb” ... and they decided that Islam was easier to release, since there were so many problems because of it. When they let go, of course, forced to swear that he would testify that he was not sitting in the basement for all these four months, but dangled somewhere in the suburbs, without the demand of his parents: “Father, they say, would not have let go in life, he had never called ...”.

If in Chechnya stolen for one reason or another-for a ransom or because of the scandalous of the case-in the end, they are released in a few days, weeks or months, it is usually forced to tell just such a story. And he tells. And signs. Because it’s scary - for yourself, for the family. After all, they explain in detail what will happen if at least a word to whom you whisper. And most importantly, in his own skin you already know how it happens ... But Islam wanted to say, and the mobile group suggested hiding him in a safe place with the closest relatives, if he, despite the threats of the security forces, will tell the investigator the truth.

Since the spring of 2009, the SMG actually took responsibility for Islam and his relatives. They were taken to the village of X in Central Russia, settled at a guarded facility. Only in this way can their safety ensure. The investigation stood still for a long time. The investigator responsible for him in Chechnya explained to the lawyers without abysses that the riot police were not going to interrogate, because they would not only appear for interrogation, they will still take care of him and beat him. And let the lawyers enter his position: he was terrible, and any other in his place would be scared. International organizations have connected to the case. I managed to raise the noise in the press. And finally, after many months of effort, the investigation was transferred from Chechnya to the federal investigator, Colonel Sobol, who, by the way, was working in the case of Natasha Estemirova.

It is impossible to say that Sobol was able to do a lot to disclose the murder of Estemirova - the main version about responsibility for this crime of militants is extremely unconvincing today, and it is simply unknown which steps were taken to verify the possible involvement of the Chechen authorities. But he took up the Umarpashaev case seriously. Despite the serious obstacles and threats from the local security forces examined in Grozny a riotous and SMG base of riot police, where Islam was contained. He began to call riot police for interrogation and identification of specific fighters ... But these fighters still have not appeared for interrogation. And as it turned out, Colonel Sobol can do nothing to force ordinary OMON employees to cooperate with the investigation.

The mobile group, hoping that publicity will push the investigation, continuously talked with reporters, arranged for them an interview with Islam Umarpashaev ... there were more and more publications, but this did not give the result. And in early October of this year, NTV correspondent Nikolai Kovalkov entered the head of the SMG Igor Kalyapin. He suggested Kalyapin to make a plot about Umarpashaev for the weekly program "Central Television". Naturally, Kalyapin agreed.

The fact that the federal television channel is ready to cover the case of Umarpashaev and other abductions in the "Kadyrov" Chechnya seemed to be an incredible success, almost a miracle.

If this is shown on NTV, they will show to the “prime-Time” to millions to the audience, then something is changing, it means that there is hope for a normal investigation.

NTV journalists talked with Islam Umarpashaev and his relatives in that very “secret” house somewhere in Central Russia. They went to Chechnya to take off the work of Kalyapin and other SMG employees there. They took a chance to talk with representatives of Chechen law enforcement agencies involved in Umarpashaev. The Essentuki interviewed the senior investigator Sobol - just on this day, October 13, the trial on the complaint against him for inaction from Kalyapin ended there (the Kalyapin court lost). On October 16, the plot was an air. But he did not come out. The authors informed Kalyapin that they demand that they include a comment on one of the high-ranking persons, and problems with this. Two more weeks have passed. And finally, they decided to put the plot in the program on October 30, warning Kalyapin in advance that it could be removed “after the Far East”, because this happens with sharp materials.

The material was shown in the eastern regions. And then Kalyapin received an SMS from one of the journalists. He wrote that the plot was removed from the air, but the audience in Moscow, in the European part of the country, would notice it, because the hole in the program turned out to be large, ten minutes and to plug it at the last moment there was nothing but advertising. The correspondent suggested that the material has already been posted on the Internet, and it can be downloaded and distributed in different social networks. “We lost,” he explained, but this does not mean that nothing can be done anymore.

So, they “lost” ... But oddly enough, it turned out that they won. Because, even if in the near future, after the shaft of indignant publications, NTV will not show the plot in other regions, at the exit it will carefully look even more people than on that Sunday air. After all, when the excitement about the removal of the “Chechen material” reached the peak and began to be faded, the commentary of the NTV press secretary caused a new wave of indignation in the press. Maria Bezborodova said: “Indeed, the plot was shown in the Far East, after which the leadership of the [company] decided to send it for revision, verification and clarification of facts ... In general, this is a fairly common practice in the work of the information edition.” Perhaps it was the words about “ordinary practice” that they promoted a further media scandal. In recent years, this practice is too tired. So tired that there is simply nothing to breathe. And of course, the leadership of the channel did not have real claims to the material if it was broadcast in the Far East and the Urals. Or in the eastern part of Russia, the standards of objectivity and accuracy are an order of magnitude lower than in the western one? No, of course. Everything is clear to everyone.

For many years I have been working in Chechnya and the abduction of people by security forces - first the “feds”, then “Kadyrovites” - were scorched in my subcortex, like anyone who interviewed hundreds of mothers, whose sons were taken away from the house, people in camouflage uniforms. Get to nowhere. More than three thousand have “disappeared” from the beginning of the second war.

Parents who have been looking for their children for years are ready to give anything for a grain of information, for bones that can be buried.

This is unbearable. And it is unbearable for years to look at other people's tears and understand that you can not do anything.

This spring, together with colleagues from the Memorial, the Moscow Helsinki group and the “Committee against torture”, I signed an appeal to President Medvedev. In it, we referred to official letters from the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation for the Czech Republic and the prosecutor's office of the Chechen Republic, where these state structures directly responsible for the investigation state their complete helplessness in everything related to the abductions of people in Chechnya. The Investigative Committee refers to sabotage by employees of republican law enforcement agencies that do not follow any instructions and are not interrogated. The prosecutor, in turn, insists that investigators often themselves engage in the concealment of criminals and "as a result of the untimely initiation of criminal cases, uninhabited and inactivity of the investigation, the guilty persons are hidden, the location of the victims is not established."

We asked Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev personally to intervene in this situation to ensure the very “legitimacy”, about which he made many statements for more than three years in the presidential chair. There was no intelligible answer to our appeal.

And no measures were taken by the federal center.

The plot, in the framework of “ordinary practice”, removed from the air of NTV last Sunday, was built around the Umarpashaev case. But at the very beginning, the audience sees other residents of Chechnya with whom the mobile group works. Their children disappeared. And each of them speaks literally a few words about his abducted son and asks for help. For these people, Islam Umarpashaev is a lucky one. Yes, he was tortured. Yes, he sat in the basement for 4 months. Yes, he cannot return home, cannot walk freely through the streets, work, live a normal life. It can be calculated and killed every day. But now he is alive. And with him his parents. But are their sons alive? And if they are alive, suddenly they are tortured so that even death seems good?

I look at the publications about the plot taken from NTV, and I am happy that the tolerance for censorship is now breaking on it, and those who did not care about Chechnya yesterday, today Umarpashaev’s case is dismantled. I rejoice, because something may change from this. At least, it should change ...

Post Scriptum

While this article was written, it became known about the new scandal - with the removal of the mesh of the program on the same NTV, which was supposed to be discussed among other lunch of the State Property Vasily Yakemenko in a very expensive restaurant.