Izabella Evloeva

Freedom of speech in a censored state: By Lara Olszowska

In 2019, journalist Izabella Evloeva, then aged 36, left Russia for what she thought would be a two-month break. Three and a half years later, she has yet to return after being placed on a watch list for covering protests in Ingushetia on her news website Fortanga. This year, three criminal cases have been opened against her for writing anti-war opinions on her blog, Not a Woman but a Journalist, and for publishing on Fortanga Russian military casualties in Ukraine.

She now fears she may never return to the country of her birth. Ingushetia is in Russia's North Caucasus, a 'small republic on the edge of the world' says Evoloeva.

It’s principally Muslim and in keeping with tradition, she married young, at 17, and soon started a family. The next sixteen years were devoted to raising her children, but she harboured a dream of becoming a journalist, even though her parents disapproved. “It’s not a woman’s profession,” she recalls them saying.

So she settled for 'communicating with people online'.In 2013, with no journalism training or experience, Evloeva created a website for women, and published an online magazine, which caught the attention of a new TV channel, NRTK. Within a day she was offered a job as political editor. “I’d consciously avoided politics all my life," she says, "but I really wanted to be a journalist, so I accepted."

Over her four years at the channel, she worked in the culture and education sections, and also in marketing. Her time at NRTK came to end shortly after a controversial agreement was signed on 26 September 2018 by Yunus-bek Yevkurov, then head of Ingushetia, and Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Chechnya, giving Ingush territory to Chechnya.The authorities moved quickly to quash the protests that erupted in Magas, Ingushetia’s capital. Local mobile internet was shutdown to prevent information from spreading, and yet NRTK chose not to report it. “After NRTK kept silent about such a major event as the protests, I no longer considered it possible for me to work there," Evloeva says.

"It’s like I woke up. I realised I needed an alternative media that would talk about it.” She founded Fortanga in early October, naming it after the river running through the contested land of the two republics.In the following months, Evloeva covered the protests tirelessly and at great personal risk. She received an onslaught of hate on pro-government websites, politicians slandered her online, she fell victim to hacking attacks on her personal accounts, and Fortanga’s website and social media accounts have been blocked.

“They hacked into my telegram account and my personal messages were posted in one of the channels of the security forces and they edited it to look as if I were saying some terrible things,” she recounts.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have condemned Fortanga’s censorship. Its ongoing project Operation Collateral Freedom works to unblock censored websites in many countries. “This support is valuable for us journalists in the face of growing pressure on freedom of speech in countries like Russia,” says Evloeva. RSF recently completed an investigative report on internet censorship in Russia and publishes the latest developments in Russian media, including the impact on Evloeva and other journalists, on its website. “Reporters Without Borders have a very important mission to protect the interests of journalists,” Evloeva believes.

By the winter of 2018, Evloeva was in danger of burning out, and a friend suggested she take a 2-month break. She planned to leave for Europe in December 2018, but exhaustion meant forms were filled out late and she only managed to leave in February 2019. “If I had left two months earlier, I would have arrived back just in time for the next protest rally, from which they began to put everyone in jail. The fact that I’m talking to you now is just a pure accident."

Evloeva’s absence intensified threats against her and against journalists working for Fortanga. In May 2019 she received a chilling threat: "Someone contacted me and said that if you don’t stop writing, we will deal with your children and sent me a photo of my son who was playing in the courtyard.” Later in July, one of Fortanga’s reporters, Rashid Maysigov, was detained by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) for possession of drugs believed planted at his home during previous searches.

By November, the harassment had escalated. That month, the siloviki – Putin’s security men who typically use coercion and violence – searched the home of Evloeva’s elderly parents. A second search was carried out in June this year. “They don’t simply come to your house and say they need to look at everything", she says. "They surround your entire block with armoured cars and people in masks.” The following month, her father-in-law was subjected to interrogation after attending his sister’s funeral. Evloeva feels anger, pain and rage at the unfairness of it all.

In the same month that Russian authorities stepped up their crackdown against free speech - Putin ratified two new laws under the Criminal Code which makes the spreading of false information about, or public actions against, the Russian army by unofficial sources, a criminal offence - Evloeva wrote a blog that criticised pro-Russian youth marches in Magas. She later wrote a piece condemning war crimes committed by the Russian army in Bucha, Ukraine. Consequently, she was been charged under the new law for spreading “fake news” about the Russian army.

Evloeva cannot return to Russia for fear of conviction and a possible 15-year prison sentence. Fortanga is proving difficult to run from overseas and she may have to hand the website over to a new editor-in-chief. Attempts to hack her personal and professional accounts, and to intimidate her family continue to this day. Yet in spite of everything, Evloeva tries to hope for a free and democratic Caucuses. “Maybe it’s Utopian to say such things,” she says.

Russia is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, dropping 5 places since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.