The five-day Congress will be held in Russia for the first time with around 1000 people expected to attend. Speaker Sergei Mironov and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov are expected to address the Congress Monday. Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary, Miklosh Kharashti, the OSCE Representative on Mass Media, and numerous international experts will deliver papers.
Established in 1926, the IFJ is the most prestigious professional organization uniting some 500,000 media representatives from 150 countries. The Congress convenes every three years to draw up the organization's development strategy. The IFJ, which has headquarters in Brussels, held the previous Congress in Athens in May 2004.
According to the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, 75 journalists and 32 media staff were killed last year, making 2006 the deadliest year on record. Figures released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) show that some 580 journalists worldwide were killed between January 1992 and August 2006 - the majority were murdered.
The assessment came in the wake of a report by the U.S. human rights organization Freedom House, made public in Congress in early May, which cited "aggressive efforts by the Russian government to further marginalize independent media voices, punctuated by plans to regulate the Internet."
The U.S. State Department earlier this month ranked Russia among the seven worst offenders in terms of press freedom, along with Afghanistan, Venezuela, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt and Lebanon.
The most recent high-profile murder of a Russian reporter occurred in October 2006, when investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in an elevator in her apartment bloc in Moscow, the victim of an apparent contract killing.
Human rights advocates in Russia and abroad have criticized the Kremlin for tightening its grip on democracy and human rights ever since Vladimir Putin took office in 2000. However, polls show that a majority of Russians support the country's leader for the stability and economic growth Russia has enjoyed during his tenure.
