�The deputies of pro-governmental factions propose considerable reductions in the number of mass media employees recognised as journalists with all the attenuating consequences for their professional activity.�This was Sergei Ivanenko�s assessment of the amendments to the law �On the Mass Media� proposed by a group of deputies from the �Unity� and LDPR factions and the �People�s deputy� group.

Ivanenko said that liquidation of Article 52 of the law is especially dangerous, as this article clearly states that freelance writers also possess the status of journalist. �It is well-known that

mainly freelance staff work in Chechnya. Depriving them of the status of journalist would mean that there would be absolutely no free information from this region,� stressed Ivanenko.

He also said that the constitutional formulation on the ban on calls to change the constitutional order of the state (Article 4 of the law), which is effective for every citizen of the RF, for journalists is changed to �incitement to a change in the constitutional order� may have dramatic consequences. �This is reminiscent of the ideology of objective guilt a la Vyshinsky (Ed. Public Prosecutor in Stalin�s USSR), when a person was indicted on the consequences of his actions rather than on the basis of his actions,� added Ivanenko.

Ivanenko is convinced that these dubious proposals represent �a corner stone, if not a position of the executive authority cast by the Kremlin to gain an impression of the general attitude to the systematic attack on freedom of speech in Russia.�

Ivanenko thinks that society should raise an alarm and draw public attention to these issues. �I don�t think that these draft laws in their

present wording have any chance of passing through parliament. However, here they are applying a strategy which can be summed up as �constant tinkering to erode the stone�. Slight amendments restricting journalists� rights and freedom of speech are introduced into one law, and then into another one, and then one day we will wake up in a different country,� stressed Ivanenko.