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Meet Anastasia Sechina from Russia

On the importance of keeping regional journalism alive

17.01.2021

5.1 Minutes

Update (December 2021):

Following the publication of this article in March 2021, the organization lead by Anastasia Sechina – “The Fourth Sector” came under the intense scrutiny of the Russian state apparatus and, in the end, decided to cease its operations. In July 2021, the Ministry of Justice launched an unscheduled inspection of the organization and in August labelled it a “foreign agent” – something Sechina herself predicted in the interview for this piece. According to her, the Justice Ministry claimed that “The Fourth Sector” had received money from foreign organizations and had engaged in political activity because in some of its publications, journalists had expressed criticism of actions by the law enforcement agencies and the penal system. Furthermore, the authorities claimed, some of its publications promoted “tolerance of LGBT people”, an action "contradicting state policy". Lastly, they claimed "The Fourth Sector" organized a rally in support of the persecution of fellow journalists – Ivan Golunov and Ivan Safronov, when in fact they had initiated these actions in their personal capacity, as citizens and fellow journalists, and not on behalf of "The Fourth Sector" itself.

“After our organization was recognized as a foreign agent, we decided to close it for several reasons. The status made cooperation with our organization unsafe; everyone who worked with us would be at risk of being recognized as individual foreign agent. We are a small initiative and do not have the resources to afford the administrative costs that bearing this status implies. And we risk a large fine because we did not voluntarily register as a foreign NGOs,” Sechina says. Despite the formal closure of “The Fourth Sector,” Sechina insists that the journalists who worked as part of it would continue cooperating, one way or another, despite the continued risk associated with this. “We released a sequel to the "Accusatory Clones" project, which talks about how the presumption of guilt works in Russia and why a political motive is not necessary to imprison an innocent person. We have released a large research project on humanitarian forensics, in which we research how this expertise helps to imprison and fine people for words and pictures,” the editor of “The Fourth Sector” adds.

It is a well-known fact that it is not easy working as a journalist in Russia. “Journalists work in an environment of fear, maintained by physical and verbal violence, imprisonment, censorship, economic and political pressure,” concluded Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom’s own Freedom Barometer in the section dedicated to the country.

Anastasia Sechina, a reporter and editor based in the city of Perm, shares how she has been fighting – and surviving – in the inhospitable Russian media tundra for almost 20 years now, and why she still does it. “Small, local media can become a focal point for civic activism on a particular topic, it can inspire and educate citizens to join together to change something,” she says.

Currently, she is coordinating an independent journalistic project, the award-winning “The Fourth Sector” media collective, as well as a platform for journalist tools called “Gribnitsa” (“Mycelium” in Russian) that aims to spread much-needed knowledge among reporters from local media that hardly ever get access to such things.

To her, the number of people who have visited an article’s web page isn’t the most important thing. “I don't think that the number of readers is the most important thing in our work. Sometimes, your text is aimed at one person — the governor. And it is important that the governor reads this. Just one person,” she claims.

Sechina did not become an independent journalist entirely on her own accord. Actually, before 2016 she had spent 14 pretty successful years as a radio host, an editor-in-chief and, finally, programme director of the “Echo of Perm”, a regional partner of the “Ekho Moskvy” (Echo of Moscow) radio station, one of the oldest and most respected broadcasters in Russia at the time.

This abruptly came to an end with the purchase of the station by a businessman who wanted to run for office in the State Duma. “He started to use the station for his own political purposes, so we tried to resist him, but it was not successful. Then he said — you either do the things that we want, or you go. And I left the station, with most of the journalistic team as well,” Sechina recalls.

“Being a journalist in Russia is difficult primarily because of our laws. I am talking about the law on fake news, the so-called ban on the propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation, the law about foreign media agents, and the law on justification of terrorism and various others,” lists Sechina. “These laws are written in such way that if they want, they can convict you, they will find a reason if they really want to. There are no clear criteria and the application is selective.”