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Chechen president-elect slams media over Chechnya

GROZNY. Sept 25 (Interfax) - The Chechen president-elect on Saturday urged the media to report positive developments in Chechnya and not to link the region and its people to terrorism.

"Nor can I see in the local media any thoroughly prepared and serious publications or television programs that would show the image of the true Chechen and suggest conclusions about what the Chechen people think of all that is happening," Alu Alkhanov told a conference entitled "On the Human Rights Problem in the Chechen Republic."

Nor are there any serious programs in Chechnya or Moscow about Wahhabism, an ultra-fundamentalist trend in Islam, programs showing the true face of Wahhabism and Wahhabis, he complained.

"Nor is there any intensive action against this practice [in the media], any specific concept, or any information mouthpiece in Chechnya itself or in Moscow, one that would tell the truth about this," he said.

The head of the Russian presidential human rights commission insisted on bringing out television programs and newspaper stories about the true attitude of the Chechen people to terrorists and terror.

"They should be programs showing the life of specific families and specific persons, showing how the Chechen people themselves and individual people are suffering from all that is happening and how these people live," Ella Pamfilova said.

Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin confirmed that this was a very important problem.