Press Release, 4.02.2019

Oppositional Perm deputies accuse the city parliament leadership of censorship

The leadership of the Perm Duma has banned posting on social networks of the city parliament videos of Nadezhda Agisheva, deputy from the Yabloko party, in particular, those on raising the retirement age, problems of lonely disabled people, as well as changing zoning in the Kirovsky district of Perm.

https://www.facebook.com/nagisheva/videos/1139552339556243/?t=0

“This is the video that was banned by the leaders of the Perm City Duma from posting on the pages of the Perm City Duma in social networks. Last year, the video reel of Gennady Storozhev, deputy of the Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, was not paid for on one of the TV channels. He criticised the pension reform in that reel. That’s how censorship looks like. In fact, we are prohibited from expressing publicly the political stance of our parties through the channels that are maintained at the expense of our voters’ taxes. This example reflects the situation very well: any discussion and criticism causes panic and counteraction. Polling numbers of the [ruling] United Russia [party] have dropped, and any mention of complex and important topics is blocked at all levels – from municipalities to federal power bodies,” Nadezhda Agisheva wrote on Facebook.

Nadezhda Agisheva noted that the city budget spent 45 million roubles a year only on informing the residents of the city about the activities of the Duma through mass media. Some budget funds go to the maintenance and updating of the Duma web-site and its pages in social networks. At the same time, information forming a positive image of the leadership of the Duma and some deputies is often spread under the guise of “spreading information”.

Nadezhda Agisheva also stressed that she had taken a principled stance of not using the opportunity to spread information about her parliamentary activities at the expense of the budget. The parliamentarian decided to fight censorship on the Duma’s website – she began to produce her own content and pass it on to the press service of the city parliament, but the City Duma refused to publish two video reels of the deputy from Yabloko.  In addition, according to Nadezhda Agisheva, the press service of the City Duma diligently “silences” the position of the Yabloko faction in virtually all its reports on plenary sessions and discussions.

“There is no regulation that would allow the Duma staff to prevent me from spreading information on my stance,” head of the Yabloko faction in the Perm City Duma noted.