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eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 23/4/2004 Chechen Society newspaper receives warning The Chechen regional department of the Russian Ministry for Press, TV, Radio Broadcasting, and Mass Media issued an official warning to the editorial staff of the independent social and political newspaper Chechen Society on April 19. "By publishing the article "Obituary Leaflets in Memory of Yandarbiyev Distributed in Chechnya", the Chechen Society, No 6 of 23 March 2004, you broke Article 57 of the Russian Law on the Mass Media. (Editor's note: Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev is an ex-president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.) Under the guise of an informational article, you in fact published a whole number of provocative appeals and declarations extremist by nature," reads the document. "This fact cannot be covered and justified by editorial insets like: "... reads the leaflet; ... mentioned in the obituary." The document is singed by head of the regional department Ismail Munayev. "The editors don't agree to the decision by the regional department. We don't think that the publication of such a material was reprehensible and even more so provocative by nature. We don't rule out the opportunity to lodge an official protest against this decision," Tamerlan Aliyev, an editor of the Chechen Society said to the Caucasian Knot correspondent on April 22. Author: Sultan Abubakarov Source: Own correspondent
Apr 24 2004 11:25AM MOSCOW. April 24 (Interfax) - The Russian Justice Ministry has objected to the idea of outlawing the radical Islamic movement known as Wahhabism and punishing its followers. "Persecuting people for religious beliefs means violating the constitution and other laws. People must be punished for specific actions and violations of the law," chief of the Justice Ministry's department for non-government and religious organizations Alexander Kudryavtsev told Interfax. The Justice Ministry earlier objected to an initiative from the Dagestani State Council to outlaw Wahhabism. "The Justice Ministry considered this proposal not to be in compliance with international law and Russian legislation," Kudryavtsev said. The Justice Ministry official added that people who have committed crimes and identified themselves as followers of Wahhabism were prosecuted not for their religious beliefs but for specific deeds and offences, particularly for membership in illegal armed units. "It you take residents of the Dagestani villages of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi as an example, they were punished not for being Wahhabites but for violating Russian laws by setting up illegal armed units," Kudryavtsev said, referring to events in August 1999, when guerilla units attacked Dagestan from Chechnya. Infanticides April 13, 2004 Human Rights Center “Memorial” released a preliminary report: “April 9 in the mountain village of Rigakhoi a woman, Maidat Tsintsayeva, and her five children were killed during an aerial bombing. The oldest child was seven years old. When the bombing started, the woman gathered the children around her, but the bomb hit the house.” The Human Rights in Russia edition reported that this report was repeated by a number of news and information agencies. On the same day chief of press service of Russia's Air Force, Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky, made a statement where he denied any involvement of the Air Force in the tragedy in the village of Rigakhoi, - “No bombers were scrambled in that region of Russia.” “The reports of some Russian and foreign mass media about it are totally contrary to the reality.” (ITAR-TASS, 04-13-2004). April 14, 2004 representatives of the Memorial human rights center visited the scene of the tragedy. The detailed report says that April 8 during the day, between 2:00 and 2:30 PM, a bomb strike was conducted on the remote mountain village of Rigakhoi, Vedeno District (the number of one of the bombs was 350F 5-90). When the bomb hit the house of Imar-Ali Damayev, almost his entire family died: his wife Maidat Tsintsayeva, b. 1975, and children: Janasi, b. 1999, Zharadat, b. 2000, Umar-Haji, b. 2002, Zara, b. 2003, and Zura, b. 2003 (photo provided by Human Rights Center Memorial from the murder scene). The fact that the sheep and the horse were outside of the house and were killed speaks about how strong the blast was. The head of the household Imar-Ali, who was at the cemetery and who witnessed the bombing, and seven-year-old Umar, Imar-Ali’s oldest son, who was at school in the neighboring village, were lucky to survive. The locals reported that April 13 at around 10:00 AM officers of the invaders’ prosecutor’s office arrived in a helicopter. After a superficial inspection of the murder scene they stated that “a landmine went off and there are no grounds to launch a criminal prosecution”. In this connection the human rights activists reminded that on many occasions over the past ten years Russian troops were trying to deny their involvement in bombings and artillery shelling of Chechen villages, claiming that “they are blowing themselves up”. Department of Cooperation and Mass Media, Kavkaz-Center 2004-04-23 |