Update 4/6/10: The Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, turned down the State Duma’s bill during it’s Tuesday session. Mihkail Kapura, deputy chairman of the judicial committee, cited a lack of viability to implement such restrictions and the danger of bringing about the destruction of free speech.

A new law passed on Monday by the Russian State Duma will ban the media from reproducing any statements whatsoever issued by anyone deemed to be a terrorist, ITAR-TASS reports.

The bill was written by Robert Shlegel, a member of the leading United Russia party and former press secretary for the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi. It will amend current legislation governing the media to include a ban on “the distribution of any material from persons wanted for or convicted of participating in terrorist activities.”

Shlegel said that the March 29 suicide bombings on the Moscow metro, which killed 40 people and injured more than 100, was the impetus for the bill. He said that he opposes giving a spotlight in the media to Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel leader who has claimed responsibility for the attacks. He also criticized Google for allowing its YouTube video service to host a recording of Umarov’s post-March 29 statement.

“News about militants should consist only of reports about their destruction,” Shlegel concluded.

Amidst the heightened criticism at the Russian government’s failure to address terrorism originating in the country’s volatile North Caucasus region, some Kremlin supporters have accused the press of being terrorist collaborators. In particular, State Duma Speaker and United Russia member Boris Gryzlov singled out columnist Aleksandr Minkin of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper as collaborating with the terrorists responsible for the March 29 attacks. Minkin has demanded an apology from Gryzlov and threatened to sue him for slander. Gryzlov has threatened a counter suit. Additionally, United Russia member Andrei Isayev has threatened that party members might sue Minkin for being a terrorist collaborator.

Director Oleg Panfilov of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations said that the new law will turn Russia into a country like North Korea and was another example of Shlegel’s “routine stupidity.” “It immediately raises the question,” he said, “Who do we label as terrorists? Those convicted by the court, or those that the bureaucrats consider to be terrorists?”

Secretary Mikhail Fedotov of the Russian Union of Journalists explained that nothing good could result from Russian society being deprived of information about the positions and confessions of alleged terrorists. “Society should know the face of its villains and understand what kind of evil it is being confronted with,” he stressed.

Even without the new law, the Russian media already faces complications with the authorities’ interpretation of current media legislation. Reports surfaced late Monday that the federal communications supervisory agency Roskomnadzor has accused the online edition of the Argumenty Nedeli newspaper of extremism for posting a video of Umarov’s statement. According to the agency, posting the video violates a law prohibiting the media from being used for extremist activity. The law, however, is criticized by oppositionists and human rights groups as being so vague as to allow the government to define extremism however they’d like, and has resulted in crackdowns on a wide variety of groups and individuals critical of the Kremlin.

The United Civil Front, a Russian pro-democracy social movement lead by Garry Kasparov, has issued a statement in response to Monday’s bombings on the Moscow metro. The attacks were the worst the city has seen in six years, leaving at least 39 dead and wounding more than 100. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin quickly promised “to destroy the terrorists,” and reports surfaced late Wednesday that Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov has taken responsibility for the attacks.

The government has come under criticism from an uncharacteristically wide range of sources for failing to live up to its promises to protect its citizens. Rights activists and oppositionists fear that the government will use the attacks as an excuse to impose further infringements on civil liberties, as has been the pattern over the past ten years.

Don’t Believe Putin
March 31, 2010

Compatriots!

The issue of citizen safety has once again become as sharp as ever before. However, the safety of Russia’s citizens has not depended on the citizens themselves for already the past ten years. The political regime established in Russia does not allow Russian citizens to influence the government through lawful means – with elections for local and federal authorities. As a result of the destruction of democratic freedoms, those very institutions of power have been destroyed, including the independent courts and the police.

The tragic events that occurred in Moscow on March 29, 2010, could be appropriated by the current government for an even larger infringement of the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation. The apartment bombings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk in the fall of 1999 triggered the beginning of a second military campaign in Chechnya and immediately provided Vladimir Putin with the necessary ratings for victory in the 2000 presidential elections. As a result of the terrorist attacks in the Dubrovka Theater in October 2002 and in Beslan in September 2004, elections for governors and regional leaders in Russia were abolished.

And today, after the events of March 29 in Moscow, it is obvious that these measures did not increase the safety of Russia’s citizens in the least. Regardless of the loud proclamations sounded over the course of the ten years of Vladimir Putin’s rule, neither he nor his team has succeeded in coping with terrorism on the territory of the Russian Federation. All of the pathos-laden talk about the necessity to reform the security agencies rings as hollow as ever before.

Instead of providing safety to the residents of Moscow and other Russian cities, the security forces have spent these years breaking up peaceful demonstrations of discontent where the government’s actions, including the failed federal policies in the Caucasus, are criticized.

Therefore, we call upon our compatriots not to succumb to the provocations organized by the Russian intelligence agencies, and not to forget the main cause of the troubles that have befallen our country. Any announcements by the government about the tightening of any kind of regulations on public order or attempts by Kremlin-controlled media outlets to distract citizens from the essence of the problem should be taken as the Putin regime’s routine bloody publicity spin. But all of this already happened at the beginning of the last decade. Now the time has come for society to fight against terrorism and the political extremism of the government.

Translation by theOtherRussia.org.