The responsibility of the European media in the defamation of a whole people

Brussels, 11 March 2002.

Olivier Dupuis, Andrei Rodionov, Secretary of the Radical Anti-militarist Association (bases in Moscow), and Oumar Khanbiev, Minister of Health in the Chechen government, are continuing their hunger strikes for Chechnya. They have now reached 18, 14 and 7 days respectively.

The aim of the initiative is to urge the European Union – including the European Parliament - to make concrete efforts in favour of immediate negotiations between the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the Chechen President Aslam Maskhadov.

Statement by Olivier Dupuis, Member of the European Parliament and Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party:

“Since the American intervention in Afghanistan last November, most of the European media – with rare exceptions – have “informed” their readers, listeners and viewers of the presence of Chechens fighting side by side with the Talibans. This news, repeated week after week and underlined with evocative headlines, has been regularly relaunched. Survivors from Afghanistan have “allegedly” been located in the Pankisi valleys of Georgia, and recently in the Gardez region, the last Taliban bastion in Afghanistan. What these European “experts” do not know is that despite the intense searches conducted in the last three months, not only by the American soldiers but also by the hundreds of international reporters present in Afghanistan, not a single Chechen has so far been found in Afghanistan … Only a few Americans, Frenchmen and Australians… This is clearly a case of the systematic, repeated defamation of a whole people, which in any self-respecting state based on the Rule of Law should be a matter for the judiciary and lead to serious penalties. Since this will not happen, can we at least hope for rectification and some coverage of the Chechen tragedy?”

From a press release of the Transnational Radical Party.