Belarusian legislators suggest taking measures against Moskovsky Komsomolets :: Charter'97 :: News

The National Assembly of Belarus decided to request Prosecutor General Pyotr Miklashevsky to consider the possibility of bringing Russia`s daily Moskovsky Komsomolets to account for its coverage of the Belarusian police`s crackdown on an unauthorized Chernobyl demonstration in Minsk, in which 14 visiting Russian youths were arrested.

The decision, made at a joint meeting of both parliamentary chambers on Friday, was initiated by House of Representatives member Viktor Kuchinsky, who described the Moscow-based publication`s April 28 report on the event as insulting Belarus and its leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko.

In particular, while describing the police operation to disperse the demonstrators, the paper used phrases such as "trained mongrels of Nazi thug Lukashenko."

"As a parliamentarian, army officer and citizen of Belarus, I feel offended because they label the president of the country and men in uniform as Nazi thugs," Mr. Kuchinsky said.
He also accused the Belarusian embassy in Moscow of failure to take proper measures in response to those attacks.

However, Vladimir Grigoryev, the Belarusian ambassador to Russia, was quick to lash out at the Moskovsky Komsomolets. He said in his April 29 statement that the Russian newspaper’s “biased and insulting” coverage of the demonstration “causes great damage to the formation of the Union State, undermining patriotic values, the high ideals of fraternity and friendship between our nations, and our family sentiments that the Belarusians feel toward the Russian Federation, and its kind and moral people.”

“It is natural that the most nasty offenders who disturbed the public peace were arrested and their administrative cases went to trial in accordance with the established procedure,” he said.
“Certain media outlets continue providing sponsored and knowingly false information about the republic’s internal political affairs and integration processes between our states,” the ambassador noted.

“As soon as there is appreciable progress in the Belarusian-Russian integration process thanks to efforts by the leaders of our countries, diabolical intrigue begins and the outworn argument of the lack of democracy is put forward with enviable persistence” to justify meddling in Belarus’ internal affairs, he said.