Murtazaliev: authors of Dagestan "execution lists" wanted to return journalists back to legal field

On October 12 in Makhachkala, Abulmuslim Murtazaliev, Chairman of the Public Chamber of Dagestan, said at the roundtable on the topic "On public-political broadcasting of Dagestan television that the authors of the so-called "execution lists" just wanted "to bring journalists back to the legal field."

In the course of the roundtable, Nadira Isaeva, editor-in-chief of the republic's independent weekly "Chernovik" (Blueprint) asked Mr Murtazaliev to explain the sense of his article "Journalist, Don't Harm", published by the republic's newspaper "Dagestanskaya Pravda".

The article said that the appearance of the leaflets with "execution lists", which include also six well-known local journalists, was "an appeal to return some figures of the information sphere back to the legal field, an appeal to observe the requirements of the professional journalistic ethics and the law."

Ms Isaeva also asked to clarify the status of the Public Chamber of Dagestan as such. "Who are you? A department under the Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Dagestan? Only today another court session of the trial of "Chernovik" took place, and you insist in your article that law enforcer don't persecute independent journalists," she said.

Mr Murtazaliev answered that everything he had written was true. "When we saw who creates commercial media, we got horrified. Journalists of commercial media have no stand. The head of the Khasavyurt District was killed some journalists transferred the fact of the crime into the sphere of interethnic relations. They shouldn't behave like that," he said.

Ali Kamalov, Chairman of the Union of Journalists of Dagestan, noted that the authorities of Dagestan persecute independent media only because their journalists write articles disliked by bureaucrats.

The roundtable as such started with the presentation of Suleiman Uladiev, Chairman of the GTRK "Dagestan", who emphasized a number of points, hampering, in his opinion, the work of TV reporters: shortage of funds, refusals of the officials to give information, painful perception of criticism by bureaucrats, vulnerability of the journalists, complete ignoring of critical materials and the presence of zones prohibited for criticism.

Alik Abdulgamidov, journalist of Channel One and a member of the Public Chamber of Dagestan, said that the pressure on independent media would bring nothing good. "If we keep silent about the problems, extremists will start speaking. Clever authority should always manage to find common language with independent journalists; the presence of them gives chances for development. We need a platform for debates, where everyone could speak out on any topic," the journalist has noted.