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.