Word: pressings
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...live among the powerful while lambasting those who lord it over others. Before the global downturn, which Lebedev says has cost him $1 billion, he was a predictable, if persistent, critic of former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, routinely calling for an independent legislature, a free press and free elections, and a crackdown on corruption. Improving his image has been the Moscow tabloid he co-owns, Novaya Gazetta, which is known for publishing stories on the war in Chechnya, bribe-seeking officials and the nation's abysmal public services. Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist famous for her dispatches from...
...this has aroused Lebedev's reformist zeal. More than ever, he says, Russia needs an independent judiciary and legislature, a free press, real elections, real political parties. The oligarchs, he says, understand that the system cannot survive forever. They are scared and looking for handouts. (At the top of the list is Oleg Deripaska, head of investment firm Basic Element, which has interests in the aluminum, energy and financial-services sectors among others, and recently received a $4.5-billion infusion from the state.) "Once they found themselves in trouble they started this sort of SOS signal, calling on Putin...
...reach a political solution, and several governments in Colombo tried talks with the LTTE, but by 2006 a shaky cease-fire had fallen apart. The army pushed full-bore to finish off the Tigers, particularly its charismatic leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and Rajapaksa would not brook questioning, by the press or his opponents, of his government's tactics. But now that the fighting is over, Rajapaksa's overwhelming military victory could prove Pyrrhic if he fails to give equal attention to reconciliation. (See pictures inside Sri Lanka's rebel-held territory...
...face of pressure, Rajapaksa has hardened his position, interpreting criticism as a product of either LTTE propaganda or neocolonial sermonizing. He rejects the U.N.'s civilian-casualty figures and insists that conditions in the camps are good. But he has refused - even after declaring victory - to allow the press or international observers to verify those claims. No journalists or U.N. agencies have been permitted into the former war zone (with the exception of an entourage flying over it with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon), and journalists are allowed into the camps only on government-sponsored tours...
...Advocates for press freedom, too, are outraged that even after declaring victory, Rajapaksa has not lifted the restrictions on the press imposed as war measures. On July 12, the government banned a popular news website that had run stories critical of the government after the war's end, and it has not yet found those responsible for the murder in January of a prominent Sri Lankan journalist and critic of the government, Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was also a freelance reporter for TIME. But those who know Rajapaksa well say that his pragmatism may, in the end, win out. He never...