Two bodyguards wait for Zaour Gaziev outside his house. Since he was attacked by 6 strangers the family of the journalist from Dagestan have clubbed together to pay for the two armed men to accompany him at all times.

Zaour Gaziev keeps on his computer photos taken the night of the attack. He immediately filed a complaint with the police and called the press so his case would not be silenced.

 
“Moscow is very far away and they laugh at what happens in Dagestan. Dagestan lives by its own laws which are not at all subordinate to Russian laws,” says the journalist.

Four months after the attack, the enquiry has led nowhere and Zaour Gaziev is certain that the police will never find his attackers.  “In Dagestan the police are feared more than the gangsters. You can gather your family and defend yourselves against the gangsters but it's impossible to defend against the police - they have the law behind them,” explains Zaour Gaziev.

In Makhachkala, the capital of this small republic in Russia's northern Caucasus, there are only a handful of opposition newspapers and journalists tell of the pressures to which they are regularly subjected. “The pressure comes most often from the security services, explains Diana Alieva, a journalist from the newspaper Respublika. "For example they can take us to court for what we write and the courts themselves are biased”.

If they write something controversial, the journalists get a phone call telling them how to work, what they should say and what is better left unsaid....they've had so many of these calls that the Dagestani journalists have become cautious.
“Lately I've been thinking about all this," says Natalia Chkandybina, from the Russian news agency Ria Novosti. "When I write I try to be a little less direct, in particular when it concerns the security services. I don't want any problems with them.”

Zaour Gaziev was taken off Dagestani TV for being too critical of the authorities. Now he works for the local bureau of one of the last free radio stations in Russia. He is now persona non grata on all local TV channels.