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Russia clamps down on religious insults

Thursday February 16th 2006, 9:13 am
Filed under: Newspapers

Russia clamps down on religious insults
After the recent Muslim caricature controversy, Russian media organisations have been ordered not to publish anything that could be construed as offensive to any religion or risk losing their licences. Russia’s media and culture watchdog, The Federal Service for the Oversight of Legislation in Mass Communications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage, has pledged to take a tough line against any organisation accused of ‘insulting religious feelings’. A spokesman said: ‘Measures envisaged in Russian legislation, including the cancellation of registration, will be taken if any Russian media issue materials insulting religious feelings.’ Today’s announcement was followed by the launch of an investigation by the Russian Prosecutor General’s office into a Volgograd newspaper that recently published a religious cartoon. The cartoon, which appeared in Gorodskiye Izvestia, depicted Jesus Christ, the prophet Muhammad, Moses and Buddha watching TV pictures of two groups of people preparing for a fight. The caption under read: ‘We did not teach them to do that…’ The paper’s editor, Tatyana Kaminskaya, objected to the investigation and said the cartoon was designed as a protest against religious and inter-ethnic intolerance. (Media Guardian,February 16, 2006)

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