The Equality Dignity Pride Initiative Group’s team of human rights advocates of the North-West have presented a report on the results of media monitoring of human rights violations in the Barents Region of Russia in 2020. It was published on Equality Dignity Pride’s website on February 11.
The project’s team noted that the Novaya Gazeta Media Outlet and the 7x7 — Horizontal Russia Online Newspaper had written about human rights issues most frequently in 2020.
“I think that this information should be important for activists when it comes to whom they should contact. Who will be able to respond first and with whom can you talk and negotiate? Neither SeverPost, nor state-funded TV channels, but those journalists who cover all this. And it may help activists understand whom it is safe to contact and who is ready to publish our stories, who is ready to investigate them and accept these risks”, said Valentina Likhoshva, the monitoring's author.
Equality Dignity Pride’s team — Valentina Likhoshva, Alexander Borisov, and Natalia Donskova — has analyzed 211 publications of 22 media outlets; they have included some in the monitoring report. Its geography envelopes Murmansk and Arkhangelsk Oblasts, the Republics of Karelia and Komi, as well as the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
The report covers cases of discrimination, violence, and stigmatization reported by the Russian media. Environmental safety and health were among the main topics of publications in 2020. The topic of domestic violence has become less visible against the background of the pandemic.
You can find the body text of the monitoring on the Equality Dignity Pride Project’s website.
The presentation of the report took place in the Agriculture_club Art Space in Petrozavodsk at the end of January. The correspondents of Novaya Gazeta and 7x7 were given awards by the initiative group. Tatyana Britskaya from Novaya Gazeta was awarded for her contribution to the fight against stigma in the region, and 7x7’s correspondent Sergei Markelov*, who was labeled as a foreign agent media by the Ministry of Justice in December 2020, — "for his devotion to the job."
Equality Dignity Pride is a team of independent activists with diverse experience in human rights work, who spread the ideas of value, acceptance, and equality of everyone in reducing social stigma and discrimination in the North-West of Russia. The team of activists has prepared the monitoring of human rights violations for the second consecutive year.
