Chechen Ombudsman accuses Big Encyclopaedia authors of slander

Ombudsman in Chechnya Nurdi Nukhazhiev demands to bring the editor-in-chief of the Big Encyclopaedia to responsibility for the "anti-Chechen article" placed in the 58th volume of the edition.

"The article about the Chechen Republic contains the purposely collected whole set of negative stereotypes about Chechens ever published, starting from the times of Tsarist colonization," runs the Ombudsman's statement.

Mr Nukhazhiev has already sent his respective appeals to Chairman of Council of Federation Sergey Mironov, Chairman of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov, General Public Prosecutor Yuri Chaika, President of the Academy of Sciences Yuri Osipov and Minister of Culture Alexei Avdeev.

"The text of the article is not only highly ideologized and politicized, but goes far beyond these frameworks, growing into racist and chauvinistic encroachments and charges," runs Nukhazhiev's statement.

He also notes in his address to the General Public Prosecutor of Russia that the article about the Chechen Republic of the Big Encyclopaedia should be studied for the presence of crime attributes envisioned by respective articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation dealing with slander and kindling of national enmity; the 58th volume of the Big Encyclopaedia should be withdrawn from circulation for the above reasons.

Earlier, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences had sharply criticised the "deliberate falsifications" of the history of the Chechen nation, contained in the article named "The Chechen Republic" placed in the Big Encyclopaedia. "An opinion is created about Chechens as the people, not capable to be engaged in creative work. In the opinion of the author of the article, Chechens had been living only from plunders and robberies," runs the expert's judgement of Vitaly Naumkin, Director of the Institute, and some of his colleagues, which was quoted by the "Interfax".