Ryazan: "Caution, hate speech!"

On November 22, 2006, at a press conference of representatives of the Ryazan School of Human Rights, a new action was announced, which on November 25 will be launched by public activists of the city against hate speech in the press of the region.

The head of the Ryazan School of Human Rights, Sofia Ivanova, spoke about the problems associated with hate speech and the results of previous monitoring and actions. Ryazan has been participating in the project since its very first stage - since 2001. To date, according to the available preliminary data, according to S. Ivanova, Vechernyaya Ryazan and MK in Ryazan are leaders in the "tolerance rating". Also among the publications that allow the publication of nationalist articles on their pages, she mentioned the newspaper "Blagovest".

Coordinator of the action "Caution, hate speech!" Yulia Piskunova said that the event will start on November 25 and will last until December 25. The purpose of the action is not so much to convict the media of using hate speech, but to draw the attention of journalists to the wording, since most often the illegal use of phrases comes from ignorance of journalists, as well as from a lack of awareness of the measure of responsibility for such "oversights". For this, in particular, information packages will be sent to the editorial offices of all Ryazan media, including regional newspapers, in the next few days, which contain detailed information about the types of hate speech, examples of their manifestation with comments, a review of documents on nationalism and extremism, as well as excerpts from the methodology of the Research Institute of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation for working with texts containing nationalist statements, and background information about the representatives of which nationalities and carriers of which cultures live in the Ryazan region.

Speaking at the press conference, Alexander Bekhtold said that lately Ryazan human rights activists have applied to the city administration four times, drawing the attention of the authorities to the activities of nationalist-minded organizations. At the same time, Mr. Bechtold said, a certain understanding was shown on the part of the administration. At the same time, he said that, based on the results of checks carried out by the prosecutor's office at the request of human rights activists, a criminal case was initiated on the distribution of RNU leaflets in the city (let us remind you that the RNU itself, as a result of these checks, was issued a warning about the inadmissibility of carrying out extremist activities).

Sources

• Ryazan rating of leading newspapers in terms of hate speech // Human rights in Russia. 2006. November 23.