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Statement of “Multinational Georgia”

September 8, 2008

The representatives of the Public Movement “Multinational Georgia” has addressed the newspaper “Alia” editor Giorgi Bregvadze being concerned regarding the article “Death to the Russian Men, Cheer the Russian Women” published in the editorial on September 2-3 of the current year (the full version of the article is attached).
 
According to the members of the organization the headline of the article is the direct call for sowing interethnic hatred and violence and consequently represents the quintessence of developing xenophobia and hate speech. The title is also carrying the character of the sexist statement. The representatives of the “Public Movement Multinational Georgia” believe that it is absolutely unacceptable for the civilized world to tolerate such definitions in the press especially at the time when the military and political conflict is still underway. Therefore, they point out the fact that such propaganda in the Georgian mass media might influence in a negative way Georgian citizens and persons of the Georgian origin residing in the Russian Federation.  
 
Taking into consideration the fact that the pure text of the article does not imply the propagation of interethnic hatred and the headline of the article is just an abstract from the speech of the young men interviewed by the newspaper correspondent, the members of the organization addressed the editor of the news paper to take all the resent public reaction into account and restrain from printing in the future similar kind of materials which might lead to the escalation of the civil confrontation by disseminating unbalanced and outrages information. Otherwise the organization will employ all the legal means to litigate the similar fact.
 
As you might know the Public Movement “Multinational Georgia” has previously protested Russian language music clip “Russia 2008” aired on the TV “Rustavi 2” (the composer of the song  - T. Rtskhiladze, performer – Z. Doijashvili), which implied the criticism of the authorities and politics of the Russian Federation. The clip consisted rude wordings and formulation, which might be percepted as offensive for the all Russian people. 
 
The Public Movement “Multinational Georgia” will continue the monitoring of the mass media. It will also address the Public Defender and the NGOs of Georgia with the intentions of calling for the meetings with the directors of the leading media sources aiming at the balanced coverage of the recent developments as well as the discussion of interethnic component in their media coverage.

Press-service of Public Movement “Multinational Georgia”

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