The Washington Post - USA (2020-07-27)

A12 EZ su the washington post.monday, july 27 , 2020

The World

sUDAN

Tribal clashes kill 60,

prompt calls for safety

New violence in S udan’s w ar-
torn Darfur region has l eft more
than 60 people dead, t he United
Nations said Sunday. T he clashes
threaten t o derail a f ragile
transition to d emocracy more
than a year after t he military
ousted longtime a utocrat O mar
al-Bashir.
The U.N. O ffice for t he
Coordination o f Humanitarian
Affairs i n Sudan s aid about 500
armed men on Saturday a ttacked
the v illage o f Masteri, located 30

miles south of G enena, the

provincial c apital o f West D arfur

province.

The clashes between the

Masalit and o ther A rab tribes in

the a rea began S aturday a nd

lasted until l ate Sunday, t he s tate-

run SUNA news agency reported,

citing unnamed sources.

The attack p rompted about

500 p eople to start a protest camp

in front of the Masalit Sultan

House, a settlement hosting

about 4,200 internally displaced

people in Masteri, t he U.N. a gency

said. The protesters called for

authorities t o protect them f rom

attacks.

— A ssociated Press

LeBANON

Israeli drone crashes

amid Syria tensions

Israel said a military drone

crashed in s outhern L ebanon on

Sunday as regional tensions ran

high, days a fter cross-border

exchanges between Israel and

Syria and the killing of a

Hezbollah militant i n an Israeli

airstrike near t he Syrian c apital.

The Israeli military issued t he

statement shortly after D efense

Minister Benny Gantz met with

army brass near Israel’s n orthern

frontier. The military said the

drone went down over L ebanese

territory “during operational

activities” along t he b order.

Lebanon’s s tate-run National

News Agency reported t hat Israeli

warplanes and d rones flew o ver

southern Lebanon throughout

Sunday.

Israel has beefed up its troop

presence a long the b orders w ith

Lebanon a nd S yria since Friday’s

strikes o n Syrian army positions.

Israel says those strikes were i n

response to unspecified

munitions fired on t he Israeli-

occupied Golan Heights. T he

exchanges came after a n air raid

on Damascus — t hought to have

been carried out b y Israel — that

killed five f oreign fighters,

including a m ember of the

Lebanese militant group

Hezbollah, which i s backed by

Iran.

— Associated Press

Number of fires surges in

Brazilian wetlands: The number

of fires in Brazil’s Pantanal

wetlands more than doubled i n

the f irst half of 2020, compared

with the same period last year,

according to data released b y a

state institute. Officials s aid it

was t he largest number of fires in

a six-month period in two

decades. The increase comes

amid domestic and international

concern about President Jair

Bolsonaro’s c alls t o clear land t o

drive economic development and

follows a s urge in fires, many set

to make land available for

farming and other industry, i n the

Amazon last y ear. There were

2,5 34 recorded fires in t he

Pantanal, the world’s b iggest

tropical wetlands, between

January a nd June, the Brazilian

National Institute for Space

Research said. Between January

and June 2 019, t he i nstitute

recorded 981 fires. A s of S aturday,

the i nstitute had registered an

additional 1,322 fires in July, for a

total of 3,856 blazes i n the

wetlands.

— F rom news services

Digest

BY ROBYN DIXON

MOSCOW — Pyotr Verzilov’s eyes
flew open e arly one Sunday morn-
ing at the sound of police batter-
ing down the door of his Moscow
apartment. The publisher of the
independent news site Mediazona
said he was thrown to the floor
and his apartment was searched
for hours.
T he June 21 raid was followed
by “a very crazy three weeks,” he
said. All his electronics were
seized, h e was jailed for 15 d ays for
cursing (he denies this) and was
repeatedly interrogated by the Of-
fice for the Investigation o f Partic-
ularly Important Cases, part of
Russia’s powerful Investigative
Committee.
Since a nationwide vote, which
wrapped up July 1, paved the way
for President Vladimir Putin to
potentially stay in power until
203 6, several high-profile journal-
ists, politicians and activists have
been arrested or convicted. The
actions are widely seen as a mes-
sage from Putin’s p owerful s ecuri-
ty agencies on the steep cost of
dissent.
To Verzilov, also part of the
performance art activist group
Pussy Riot, those three weeks
were disturbing, irritating, funny
and terrifying, all at once.
I n 2018, Verzilov survived what
he believes to have been a poison-
ing attempt by security agencies.
This time around, he claims, au-
thorities were ordered to pin
something — anything — on him.
He faces trial in coming weeks on
the obscure charge of failing to
declare a f oreign passport.

Crackdowns grow

Putin spokesman Dmitry Pesk-
ov said the Kremlin has no influ-
ence over court cases. But the list
of Putin critics seized in the latest
crackdowns continues to grow.
Prominent journalist Ivan Sa-
fronov, a specialist in military is-
sues who w ent to work for R ussia’s
space agency, was charged with
treason J uly 7 for allegedly leaking
secrets three years ago, an allega-
tion he denies.
Yuri Dmitriyev, 64, a gulag his-
torian from the rights group Me-

morial was convicted Wednesday

on child-abuse charges — which

he denied — and was s entenced to

three years in a maximum-securi-

ty prison. He was acquitted in

2018, before being charged again.

(Memorial, labeled a foreign

agent by authorities, has been re-

peatedly fined.)

Svetlana Prokopyeva, a journal-

ist from Pskov in northwest Rus-

sia, was convicted July 6 of propa-

ganda justifying terrorism, but d e-

nies wrongdoing and will appeal

her conviction.

And former Khabarovsk gover-

nor Sergei Furgal, of the opposi-

tion Liberal Democratic Party, w as

arrested on murder charges dat-

ing back as far as 2004, triggering

mass street protests i n the l eading

city of t he eastern Siberian r egion.

He had rejected the charges.

“They don’t actually need to

arrest or imprison a lot of people.

They just need a high-profile case

to send a chilling message,” said

Rachel Denber of Human Rights

Watch, referring to the Prokopye-

va and Safronov cases. “These are

very serious c harges against veter-

an journalists, so I think that these

cases suggest that we’re entering

new territory.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that

there’s a new mobilization of re-

pression and pushback against so-

ciety, against civil society and

against nonconformists.”

Independent media

endangered

After years of pressure from

Russian authorities, there is little

independent media left.

Journalists have been killed u n-

der mysterious circumstances

and editors fired. Some outlets

were shut down; others were tak-

en over by Kremlin-friendly me-

dia. In May, Vedomosti, a liberal

business newspaper, was bought

by the owner of a regional news

agency, Ivan Yeryomin. Editors

and journalists resigned, citing

censorship by the new editor in

chief, Andrei Shmarov, named be-

fore the sale was finalized.

Verzilov, of Mediazona, believes

someone in power wants to pun-

ish him f or his role in f ounding the

news group and for his actions as

part of Pussy Riot — including

invading the field during the 2018

World Cup soccer final in Moscow

with three other members dressed

as police. The stunt embarrassed

Putin in front of French President

Emmanuel Macron and other

world leaders.

“That has been directed at Pu-

tin and his regime. We have been

at t he f orefront of conflict with the

Russian government,” he said. He

predicts tougher times ahead for

independent media, activists and

opposition politicians.

“Definitely things are headed in

that direction. We expect the

problems to become harder, defi-

nitely, a s society progresses to put-

ting more pressure on Putin, be-

cause Putin has no desire to give

up power voluntarily,” Verzilov

said.

A team of 20 investigators car-

ried out eight invasive searches of

his apartment, h is m other’s apart-

ment, a friend’s apartment and

even his mother’s friend’s apart-

ment, each l asting m ost of the day,

he said. All his phones and l aptops

and those of his girlfriend, fellow

Pussy Riot member Veronika Ni-

kulshina, w ere seized — and “ even

a film projector for some weird

reason.”

After police broke into his

apartment June 21, he was inter-

rogated until after 9 p.m. and

freed, but shadowed by plain-

clothes police. He was jailed for 15

days for swearing at police, a

charge he denies.

Before he was released, police

handed him a paper signed by

Gen. Rustam Gabdulin, one of

Russia’s top investigators and the

major general of justice, accusing

him of failing to declare his Cana-

dian passport. Canadian officials

have declined to publicly com-

ment on the case, citing privacy

concerns.

“They spent the two weeks I

was in prison of looking through

my e lectronics and n otebooks that

were confiscated trying t o think of

what criminal case they could

open, and all they would find was

this quite pathetic and almost-

never-used article in the Russian

code of non-declaration of a for-

eign passport. It’s probably the

first time in the world that a per-

son has been prosecuted for his

Canadian passport,” h e said with a

chuckle. The searches a nd interro-

gations only accelerated.

A month after Verzilov’s World

Cup p itch invasion, he fell serious-

ly ill, nearly died and was flown to

Germany, where doctors said it

was “highly plausible” he had

been poisoned.

“They definitely do understand

that even if the murder attempt

did not shut me down two years

ago, in September 2018, obviously

they understand that it won’t s hut

me down — in no way, but at least

it will cause me some sense of

discomfort. They’re thinking in

terms of punishments.”

Unable to pack for prison

For those who dare to criticize

authorities, the law is often arbi-

trary.

Days after the w eek-long voting

on the constitutional changes,

journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva

was convicted of what Amnesty

International calls “trumped-up

charges” of justifying terrorism,

was placed on a terrorist list and

saw her bank accounts frozen. H er

crime: She wrote about a 17-year-

old boy who blew himself up out-

side the Federal Security Service

headquarters in Arkhangelsk in

northern Russia. By restricting av-

enues for protest, she argued, au-

thorities left young people with

few w ays to express their views.

The night before her convic-

tion, Prokopyeva, facing a possible

six-year jail term demanded by

prosecutors, was unable to pack

her jail suitcase with the neces-

sary rubber sandals and plastic

dishes. Friends did i t for her.

“It was very hard for me, and I

tried not to show how hard it was,

and everybody was amazed by my

iron character and how strong I

was,” she said. She avoided a jail

sentence but was fined 500 ,

rubles (about $7,000) and p lans to

appeal. She said the trauma of the

case has left her shattered.

“I believe that my case opens

the window for future opportuni-

ties to persecute journalists and

charge them with anything,” she

added.

Journalist Ivan Safronov is ac-

cused of passing secrets to Czech

intelligence in 2017. His lawyer

Ivan Pavlov said it was difficult to

form a defense because the prose-

cution had not properly detailed

the case.

“A nd if special services cannot

find these enemies, they need to

create them. There is a demand

for this,” Pavlov said. He said Rus-

sian law on state secrets was am-

biguous, making it unclear what

information was classified and

leaving journalists, scientists and

scholars v ulnerable.

Commenting on Safronov’s ar-

rest, Putin spokesman Peskov told

reporters that it was not linked to

his journalism and that Russian

counterintelligence “is very busy,

has a lot of tasks and does its job

very well.” Russia’s space agency

has denied that the arrest was

related to Safronov’s w ork there.

Prokopyeva believes that Rus-

sian authorities will not manage

to completely muzzle the Internet

and i ndependent journalists.

“I know how mean and low

their methods can be,” she said.

“On the other hand, I know how

important it is not to fall for self-

censorship and not to let them

narrow the limits to freedom of

speech.”

[email protected]

natalia abbakumova contributed to

this report.

In Russia, new crackdowns

Arrests follow national vote that cleared way for Putin to possibly stay in power into next decade

YuRi kochEtkoV/EPa-EFE/REX/shuttERstock

I van Safronov, right, a former newspaper j ournalist, stands i n court on July 16. He was detained in Moscow on July 7 on suspicion of state treason and then put under arrest till Sept. 6.

anton VaganoV/REutERs

Journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva, charged with publicly j ustifying

terrorism, embraces her advocate at a hearing in Pskov, Russia.