After the murder of a journalist of “Novaya Gazeta“Anastasiya Baburova on  January 19, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has called on Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to “undertake a resolute and vocal effort to protect journalists’ physical security”.

OSCE representative on freedom of the media Miklos Haraszti said in a media statement on January 23 that the tendency in the Russian Federation to resort to physical intimidation of journalists had resumed in the last months of 2008. “I am saddened to see that this trend has intensified in 2009,” Haraszti said in a letter to Medvedev and Putin. In the letter, Haraszti listed the most recent cases, including attacks against Mickail Beketov, Zhanna Akbasheva and Anastasia Baburova

  Haraszti called for concerted, centralized government action in order to resolve what he called a “chronic human rights crisis”. “Freedom of the media remains an empty assurance in any country where journalists who discuss important issues are being killed and their murderers remain unpunished. This is why vocal action on the highest level is urgently needed, in addition to the swift and thorough investigations, not all of which have yet begun,” Haraszti said.

 Unlike OSCE, Russian journalists’ community gave up hope that the powers are able to protect them. The management of the liberal opposition newspaper “Novaya Gazeta” has a message for the Russian government: If you are not able to defend our journalists, you must allow them to defend themselves. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, one of the weekly’s primary shareholders, Aleksandr Lebedev — former KGB intelligence officer making additional news this week because of his purchase of Britain’s “Evening Standard” paper — announced that “Novaya Gazeta” has appealed to the authorities to allow its journalists to carry weapons.

“I think that the FSB [Federal Security Service] and other law enforcement agencies are not carrying out their responsibilities regarding what is happening with ‘Novaya Gazeta,'” Lebedev said. “So we have officially submitted documents requesting the right to carry weapons.” Despite these grim statistics, press-freedom advocates say arming journalists is not the answer.