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Media watchdog urges Putin to stop pressure on media
covering Chechnya
November 24, 2002
AFP
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Sunday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop pressure being exerted on the Russian and foreign media over their coverage of the Chechnya conflict.
"In the space of just a few weeks, Russia has sunk into straight censorship," the organisation's secretary-general Robert Menard wrote in a letter to Putin.
"Parliament adopted an anti-terrorist law allowing prosecution of any journalist who reports on the Chechnya situation, several media have been penalised for their coverage of the recent Moscow theatre hostage-taking and now the authorities are criticising and censoring the foreign media for reporting on Chechnya," he wrote. "We ask you to veto the amendments to the anti-terrorist law and put an end to the pressure being exerted on the Russian and foreign media for reporting on Chechnya."
Russia has taken an increasingly intransigent line on the breakaway republic since a hostage crisis in Moscow last month that left 128 people dead, but is under pressure from Western capitals to reach a political solution in Chechnya where it sent troops to put down a separatist insurgency in October 1999.
Earlier this month, the Russian parliament passed an amendment to the anti-terrorist law which bans the media from printing or broadcasting news "that hindered an anti-terrorist operation" or was "opposition propaganda against an operation or an attempt to justify such opposition."
RSF (Reporters Sans Frontiers) said the amendment's "vague terms gave the government power to prosecute any journalist or media outlets reporting on terrorism or the war in Chechnya."
The organisation outlined several examples of pressure on media outlets by Russian authorities.
It said that the Russian embassy in Germany had written to the head of German public television network ARD, complaining that German media coverage of the hostage siege was "shocking, totally unacceptable and disgraceful for a public institution."
The letter suggested it might not cooperate with ARD in the future, RSF said.
The organisation also said that an airport in the republic of Ingushetia, Russian security agents seized four video cassettes of footage about Chechen refugees from the Moscow correspondent for Norwegian public television network NRK.
It said the film was later returned to him but two of the cassettes had been partly erased.
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