A resolution authored by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) that calls on Russian President Vladimir Putin to step-up efforts to investigate a decade-long string of mysterious murders of journalists in Russia was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday and became a focal point of discussion during a U.S. Helsinki Commission hearing today. 

    “Journalists fulfill an essential role in every society, and none more than those who uncover the theft of a country’s assets by its elected officials, or human rights outrages committed in its name. Journalists who do this at risk to their lives fully deserve to be called heroes,” Smith said today at a U.S. Helsinki Commission hearing on U.S.-Russia relations. “Make no mistake about it, these journalists knew they were risking their lives. We owe it to them to raise our voice to bring the killers to justice. Mr. Putin does not seem to be making a serious effort to do so.” 

    “Russia holds the second worst position in the world in the number of journalists killed in the last ten years, according to the International News Safety Institute. Reporters Without Borders counts 21 murdered journalists since March of 2000. Congress needs to raise its voice on this issue and can through passage of my resolution,” Smith added.

    Smith’s resolution (H. Con. Res. 151) calls upon Putin to seek competent, outside law enforcement assistance in the investigation of these unsolved murders. The resolution also encourages the administration to formally offer Putin and other officials of the Russian Government law enforcement assistance from the United States to help identify and bring to justice those responsible for the many unsolved murders of journalists in Russia during the past decade.

    During the Helsinki Commission hearing, Smith urged Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried to exert more diplomatic pressure on Russia to resolve these murders noting, “There is good reason to think that people in very high places are protecting the murderers.”

    Fried acknowledged the scope of the problem saying that the unresolved murders remain one of the areas of concern in U.S.-Russia relations. 

    “Attacks on journalists, including the brutal and still unsolved murders of Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya, among others, chill and deter the fourth estate,” Fried said.

    Among the unsolved murders and mysterious deaths of independent journalists in Russia that are documented in the bill’s findings are:

• Anna Politkovskaya, an acclaimed, award-winning Russian journalist and human rights activist who wrote numerous articles critical of Russia’s persecution of the war in Chechnya, of human rights abuses by the Russian Government and of Putin was shot to death in Moscow on October 7, 2006;
  
• Paul Klebnikov, the editor of the Russian version of Forbes Magazine, who was investigating suspect business dealings and corruption cases in Russia was shot to death in Moscow on July 9, 2004; and
  
• Ivan Safronov, a military affairs reporter for the Russian newspaper Kommersant who wrote articles criticizing the failure of Russian military programs and who was planning to report on potential Russian arms sales to Middle Eastern countries, including to Iran and Syria—state sponsors of terrorism—dies in mysterious circumstance, falling five stories from a window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow on March 2, 2007.