"Kommersant": Dagestani officials decide to watch journalists on Internet

On October 20, the Dagestani Ministry of Press and Information sent to its all subordinated public institutions a resolution issued by Burliyat Tokbolatova with request to directors of the republic's state-run media to provide information about accounts of employees on the Internet.

According to the resolution, nicknames and addresses of personal pages of employees are collected in order to organize the monitoring in social networks of the public institutions subordinated to the Ministry, the "Kommersant" reports today and notes availability of the text of the very document.

The Russian laws do not contain any provisions that allow officials to oblige journalists to provide their personal information. In such a manner Mikhail Fedotov, the chairman of the Presidential Council on Human Rights (HRC) and the secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, has commented on the initiative of Dagestani officials. According to Mikhail Fedotov, the above initiative restricts freedom of the media.

In his turn, Denis Sokolov, head of the research centre "RAMCOM", the initiative of Dagestani officials diminishes human dignity and obliges a person to denounce oneself.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.