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Russian Duma Votes to
Limit News Coverage

By Natalia Yefimova Staff Writer
The Moscow Times
11-3-2

Spurred to action by the hostage crisis, the State Duma on Friday approved a broad array of anti-terrorism legislation -- from far-reaching restrictions on media coverage to secret burials for slain terrorists. At the same time, lawmakers rejected the idea of an independent parliamentary commission to investigate the handling of the crisis, which left at least 119 hostages dead.
 
The most controversial piece of legislation was a bill limiting press coverage of "anti-terrorist" operations, a term applied not only to missions like the Oct. 26 hostage rescue but to the war in Chechnya as well. The bill, passed Friday by a vote of 231-106, is expected to get approval from the Federation Council and President Vladimir Putin.
 
On paper, the bill -- submitted long before the hostage-taking -- is a technicality meant to bring the law on mass media in line with existing anti-terrorism legislation.
 
However, since the siege, the restrictions have gained a new immediacy and stirred up a bitter debate on the balance between press freedom and security concerns. Some government officials and security experts have criticized media coverage of the crisis, and there have been signs that the Kremlin is unhappy with journalists raising questions about the high death toll among the hostages -- which has been blamed on poor planning of the rescue operation and the opiate-based gas used to knock out the hostage-takers.
 
Opponents of the bill worry that the new rules could be used to further clamp down on coverage of sensitive issues, including the war in Chechnya, where reporters' work is already restricted by military authorities.
 
The new amendments bar the spread of information seen as hampering anti-terrorist operations and endangering lives, as well as any remarks judged as impeding such operations or supporting resistance to them. The bill also bans media from releasing information about techniques for preparing arms, ammunition and explosives, and reiterates existing provisions banning information on special technical devices and tactics used in anti-terrorist operations.
 
If applied broadly, these definitions could theoretically be used to ban coverage of anti-war protests or pleas to negotiate with Chechen rebels and of controversial measures or weapons such as the powerful gas that proved lethal for more than 100 of the theater hostages.
 
Lawmakers from opposite ends of the political spectrum blasted the bill as repressive, with no Communists supporting the legislation and only one deputy each from the liberal Yabloko and Union of Right Forces, or SPS, parties voting in its favor.
 
SPS Deputy Andrei Vulf, a member of the Duma committee for information policy, said the new legislation "effectively introduces censorship in covering anti-terrorism operations," Interfax reported. "These are very real repressive measures aimed at severely restricting freedom of speech; effectively, the authorities are trying to put a muzzle on the media," Vulf said.
 
The Kremlin's top spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, defended the bill, saying it was little more than a legal formality.
 
"These amendments, essentially, do not introduce anything new in comparison with the law on fighting terrorism that was passed earlier," Yastrzhembsky told Interfax, adding that Russia's media laws are "as liberal as possible."
 
During the hostage-taking drama, a number of news media were reprimanded by the Press Ministry for their coverage. Moskovia television was shut down briefly and Rossiiskaya Gazeta received a warning for a photograph on its front page. Ekho Moskvy, the country's most popular and respected news radio station, got a warning that its web site could be shut down after it posted an interview with one of the hostage-takers. The station's director, Alexei Venediktov, told The New York Times last week that Ekho Moskvy was exploring the option of basing its web site somewhere outside Russia in order to avoid such problems in the future.
 
Late Friday, law enforcement officials raided the Moscow offices of Versia, a muckraking weekly newspaper, and took away a computer and server containing the contents of a coming issue devoted in part to the raid to free the hostages, news reports said. Versia editor Rustam Arifdzhanov said the official reason for the seizure was a criminal investigation linked to an article published in May on top-secret facilities, Interfax reported.
 
"All this time has passed and they have only now shown up," said an incredulous Arifdzhanov, who has been summoned as a witness in the case.
 
In another vote on Friday, the Duma passed amendments to prohibit returning the bodies of killed terrorists to their relatives or revealing their place of burial, which also drew criticism from liberal deputies.
 
The debate on this legislation took a turn toward the absurd, as one lawmaker proposed wrapping terrorists' corpses in pig skin and another suggested carting them around the city with their legs dangling.
 
"We are not in the Middle Ages," SPS Deputy Boris Nadezhdin, who opposed the amendments, told the chamber. "Let's do battle with live terrorists, not dead ones." The bill was passed 288-1.
 
Also Friday, lawmakers rejected SPS's proposal to create an independent commission to investigate the handling of the hostage crisis. The pro-Kremlin Unity faction, which controls the majority in the Duma, said in a statement that a parliamentary inquiry should only be opened after prosecutors and other law-enforcers have had a chance to investigate "without pressure from any political groups." Only 50 deputies supported the proposal, Interfax reported.
 
The presidential representative in the Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, said lawmakers would soon be considering new legislation expanding the powers of the armed forces in combating terrorism.
 
As of Sunday evening, 149 freed hostages remained hospitalized, six of them in serious condition, Interfax reported. A total of 501 had been discharged, the report said.
 
 
 
Staff Writer Andrei Zolotov Jr. contributed to this report. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2002/11/04/001.html





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