|
The Central Council of the Yabloko Association considers the actions of the authorities against the NTV company
and other mass media within the Media-Most holding as persecution on political motives.
Use of the leadership of the Public Prosecutor's Office as the main tool for implementing the political order is
extremely disturbing. Instead of mobilising all efforts to combat crime and corruption, the Public Prosecutor's
Office focused its efforts on persecution of the independent mass media. The Public Prosecutor General and his
entourage have become the protagonists for new scandals.
We have gained the impression that Media-Most has become a convenient object for the authorities to
demonstrate a show of force, which helps to distract the public's attention from the inability of the
law-enforcement agencies to combat real crime and corruption.
The financial activity of the NTV is not free of the difficulties that are also customary for the state television
companies. But if the only private nation-wide television channel is placed under the full control of the Kremlin,
Russia will be thrown back ten years to the era of the monopoly of state television. Millions of citizens of Russia
will be deprived of an alternative source of information open to general use, which may become the prologue to a
total onslaught on the freedom of speech.
Yabloko lays responsibility for unleashing the campaign of persecution of NTV on the President of the Russian
Federation and continues to assert that as guarantor of constitutional rights and liberties, the President should
provide publicly his own political assessment of these developments.
Protection of the independent mass media is one of our political priorities.
We declare our readiness to oppose arbitrary rule with all the legal methods at our disposal.
The Central Council of the Yabloko Association announces a nation-wide action "Let us Protect NTV" scheduled
for March 2001.
The action will be held under the slogans:
NTV IS OUR RIGHT TO INFORMATION!
HANDS OFF NTV AND INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS!
Chairman of the Association
G. A. Yavlinsky
| 