Yury Artiukh: preservation of national peace is Moscow’s major problem

Participants of the conference “On activities of mass media in the sphere of interethnic relations and struggle against xenophobia” held in Moscow considered preservation of national peace the main problem of the Russian capital and called for the journalists to oppose escalation of national extremism, the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent reports.

The conference was held in the Department of National Policy of Moscow on November, 29. Journalists, officials, experts in the sphere of national relationship, representatives of national republics and non-governmental associations took part in it.

Head of the Department Yury Artiukh pointed out that for a long period of time the Department had been receiving “reasonable claims concerning mass media” about interpretations of issues connected with interethnic relations in the city not always being correct from leaders of national and cultural movements and autonomous groups of Moscow.

Aslambek Paskachev, Chairman of the Russian Congress of peoples of the Caucasus (RCPC), suggested to enact legislative prohibition for mass media to mention ethnic nationality in criminal reports and carry out monitoring of publications from the point of view of observance of journalists’ ethics. He is also sorry about impunity of officials who stand up for secession of the Caucasus from Russia.

Vera Malkova, Leading researcher of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, states that the idea of ” Aliens in the city” current in the community is especially stirred up before elections. She thinks that the reason for protest moods is suspense of the problems and the authorities pay very little attention to alarm bells.

After the Plenary session Alina Afanasieva, representative of Association of Students’ Communities, told the participants that journalists of one of the central TV channels once came to the Association’s Sports club attended by people of different ethnic nationalities but finding no interethnic or other problems in the Club owned up that they would not shoot a TV program about it.