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Suspects and Criminals Deprived of Nationality
An unscheduled session of the Moscow City Duma will consider introducing a legislative initiate into the State Duma to prohibit mentioning the ethnicity of suspected or accused criminals and victims of crimes in the media and on computer networks. The United Russia Party is proposing the amendment to the law “On the Media” because it holds that the mention of such information inflames ethnic strife.
The drafters of the amendment say that, because only a citizen himself can define and indicate his ethnic membership under the Constitution of the Russian Federation, such indications in the media “without sufficient bases can be seen as unsubstantiated information and a violation of civil rights.” Leader of the United Russia faction in the Moscow Duma Andrey Metelsky also mentioned that that information could lead to ethnic strife.
The opposition in the Moscow Duma reacted to the initiative without enthusiasm. “If crime has an ethnic element, it makes no sense to hide it,” commented Communist faction leader Vladimir Ulas. Yabloko faction coordinator in the Moscow Duma Sergey Mitrokhin told Kommersant that “often the ethnicity of a criminal can be guessed from his name or photograph. This can be taken to the absurd. As a result, a journalist might suffer for objective coverage of a situation.”
Representatives of ethnic organizations in Moscow took a different view. Samvel Grigoryan, chairman of the board of the National-Cultural Autonomy of Armenians of Moscow, approved of the initiative, stating that such information “enflames ethnic strife whether intentionally or not.” Tofik Melikov of the Ochag Azeri cultural center saw unequal treatment of Slavs and non-Slavs in the press “with the goal of forming a negative image of certain nationalities.”
Alexander Belov, leader of the Movement against Illegal Immigration, was critical of the initiative, saying that it “treats the symptom, not the cause.” “There are peoples who commit more crimes than others,” he added. “There are a lot of societies with no media at all, somewhere in Africa, but peoples there hate each other and cut each other up too.”
www.commersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 21, 2006
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