Fears for democracy in Russia have suddenly grown after authorities moved to put out of business the country's only independent media group, Media-MOST, and extradite its owner Vladimir Gusinsky from Spain.
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, whose policy of "glasnost" and "perestroika" in the late 1980s led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of post-Communist democracy, warned that these hard-won freedoms were now at risk.
In Washington, the US State Department voiced alarm at the Russian government's attempt to silence Gusinsky, a prominent Kremlin critic who has been a constant thorn in the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And journalists' unions from nine former Soviet republics joined forces with their Russian counterparts in condemning the crackdown against the Media-MOST empire as a gross violation of media freedom.
Moscow's city tax inspectorate filed a suit Friday alleging that Media-MOST and its companies were unprofitable and should be declared bankrupt, following Gusinsky's arrest on Tuesday.
Gorbachev on Saturday called on Putin to intervene in the affair, saying the attempt to close down Media-MOST marked a dangerous turning point in Russia's post-Soviet history.
"All the democratic achievements of the last 15 years are under threat," he said in a statement.
The threat of liquidation was "a blow against freedom of expression, human rights, and the constitutional right of citizens to obtain information," added Gorbachev, who chairs the advisory board of NTV television.
NTV, the flagship holding of Media-MOST, is the only nationwide independent television channel in Russia.
In a statement obtained by AFP, reporters from a confederacy of unions, together with prominent Russian human rights organizations, also called on Putin to heed their warning and intervene.
"We are certain that an escalation of this conflict may seriously harm the development of free press and democratic relations between the press and the state, not only in Russia, but in all of the former Soviet states," the statement read.
The signatories included the heads of journalists' unions in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine, as well as the Russian journalists' association.
The director general of NTV television, Yevgeny Kiselev, said the Russian constitution guaranteed citizens a right to criticize the government, and accused Putin of wanting to muzzle the press.
"Who can tell me, please, which article of the constitution or which law forbids anyone to comment on decisions of power, to criticize them, and thus to try to influence them?" asked Kiselev, who is also a star journalist with NTV.
Those in power "take us for idiots or for fools capable of believing, even for a second, that these actions are accidental," he added.
But Putin, a former KGB colonel and one-time head of Russia's domestic intelligence agency who was elected in March, has already made it clear he would not intervene to assist the jailed independent media mogul.
"Everything that has been happening now and will continue to happen in the future (to Gusinsky) is in the jurisdiction of prosecutors and the judges," Putin said Friday from Havana, where he was on an official visit.
Gusinsky's influential media group, which now faces the closure of its TV channel, newspapers and radio station, has infuriated the Kremlin with probes into high-level corruption and critical coverage of the war in Chechnya.
Gusinsky himself is currently detained in Spain, awaiting extradition on charges of embezzling 250 million dollars.
He fled Russia in July after being briefly imprisoned on separate fraud charges, an investigation that sparked fears for media freedom in Russia -- MOSCOW (AFP)
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