Chief Editor of the "Nastoyascheye Vremya" newspaper dismissed in Dagestan

In Dagestan, Sergey Rasulov, chief editor of the "Nastoyascheye Vremya" (Present Time) newspaper, was dismissed for breaking labour discipline. The journalist was preparing materials for publication, devoted to violations of the freedom of speech by the founders of the edition. The pretext for the dismissal was the chief editor's absence at his workplace from 9:00 to 12:20 p.m.

"We hope that the illegal actions of our founder will draw the attention of not only law enforcement bodies, but also of the journalistic community and public institutes," Mr Rasulov said.

The journalist has added that within the recent several weeks Hanzhan Kurbanov, new editor-in-chief of the "Nastoyascheye Vremya" newspaper, has issued, at the will of the director general of the enterprise, several orders on reprimands to the employees of the journalistic collective with the aim to dismiss them afterwards under some article of the Labour Code. A number of journalists, as he said, got dismissed at their own will. The "Gazeta.Ru" writes about it.

On March 26, 2008, the employees of the Dagestan weekly newspaper "Nastoyascheye Vremya" addressed the Investigatory Department of the Investigatory Committee of the Prosecution Office of the Russian Federation for Dagestan with an application on initiation of a criminal case against Rizvan Rizvanov, Director General of the weekly "Nastoyascheye Vremya". A request was moved to the Investigatory Department to check up the actions of the founders of the edition for conformity to the provisions of the "Law on Mass Media". Now, the application has been accepted to proceedings, the IA "Interfax" reports.