Independent Perspective News

MOSKOW. DPA, ANSA, EFE. The Congress has approved a rule that drastically curtails the freedoms of the press. A newspaper suggests to elaborate a statute of journalistic ethics. Another one points out this is a return to "Soviet times".

The Russian media have reacted firmly against a law passed at the Russian Congress (Duma) which limits the information and the broadcasting of images of the Kremlin's "anti-terrorist operations" and which the majority of the specialists consider an outrageous attack to the press. The project still has to be voted by the Senate.

The Dubrovka theater hostage situation by a suicide command from Chechnya for 58 hours last week has provoked a wide range of controversies. One of them was the role of the media during and after the tragic episode that involved the death of 50 activists and 120 hostages, two of the latter shot and the other 118 as a consequence of a mysterious gas.

The newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta pronounced itself against the project and proposed instead a statute of journalistic ethics elaborated based on the associations of journalists.

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While the "hostages crisis" lasted, the government resorted to censorship -so far, illegal: it disconnected a TV channel for 15 hours for showing images from the scene that "could provide the kidnappers with information", it stopped another channel from broadcasting an interview with Movsar Barayev, the leader of the command that attacked the theater, and threatened to shut down Ekho Moskvy's web site, the most popular ratio station, for broadcasting one of the activists' aggressive message on the Russians' behavior in Chechnya.

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According to Lesin (the Minister of Communication), the Kremlin's aim is to preserve safety in times of crisis. The Russian official established a parallel regarding anti-terrorist war with the US, by pointing out that Bush's administration had requested from TV channels to stop broadcasting Osama bin Laden's videos and those of other Al Qaeda leaders.

The worst problem about the new law is related to the vagueness of its terms, since the Russians call "anti-terrorist operations" what the rest of the world -and Russia as well- call the war in Chechnya, since1999. Hence, any information about military action in the Caucasus could be penalized for violating the new rules. On Friday, the intelligence services carried out an operation at the building of the magazine Versiya, and took away a computer containing material for the coming edition on the rescue of the hostages.

The new law also bans giving details about the weapons and technologies used in anti-terrorist operations, so that, if the attack to the theater would happen today, the media would be forced to keep the secret of the poisonous gas that killed 118 hostages and sparkled the controversy.

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In an interview carried out by the magazine Focus, short before his detention, to Zakajev -the separatist exile president, Aslan Masjadov, main collaborator- he denied his participation in the hostages situations in Moscow as well as any relationship with Al Qaeda and other terrorist nets. In the same interview, he blamed the Kremlin for the attack's tragic end and stated that the authorities had heard telephone conversations in which the terrorists talked about freeing the hostages, but didn't allow it because such a turn would have meant the public's immediate sympathy for the terrorists.