MINELRES: MBHR: New Book: Russia between "Nord-Ost" and Beslan

[MINELRES moderator]

Original sender: Moscow bureau for human rights <humanrights@list.ru>


Moscow Bureau for Human Rights
115455 Moscow, Russia, p/o box 6
tel\fax 7 (095)959-27-45, (095)506-02-24
E-mail: mucsj@rambler.ru
http://antirasizm.ru

Director of Moscow Bureau for Human Rights 
Alexander Brod

In case of reprinting reference to Moscow Bureau for Human Rights is
obligatory.


Russia between "Nord-Ost" and Beslan

On the 31st of March in the Independent press-center a presentation of
the book by Sulieta Kusova, director of the Center on Study of ethnic �
confessional problem in mass media and the MBHR expert, titled as
"Russia between "Nord-Ost" and Beslan (according to materials of the
federal mass media)" took place. The book was published by the MBHR
within the limits of the project on resistance to racism and xenophobia. 

Sulieta Kusova dedicated her speech to analysis of the main problems
discussed in the book � inadequate representation of Islam and Moslems,
Caucasus and Caucasians in the Russian mass media. She emphasized that a
lot of myths in this field had been created and some of them are
discussed in details and denied in the book. For example, stories about
a mass displacement of the Russians from the Northern Caucasus
republics. This subject was primary in the "career" of nationalist
Dmitry Rogozin. S. Kusova attracted audience attention to the fact that
besides these myths there is a real official textbook on history of
Kuban where the Circassians are compared with a dragon, and the Kuban
anthem calls the Cossacks for "fight with foreigners", in other words
the Moslems. While answering the journalists' questions, S. Kusova noted
that up to the present moment phobias of the Caucasians and Moslems have
penetrated to the sphere of mass media so deeply that now it is almost
impossible to find a newspaper which does not use the hate language. 

Vera Malkova, senior staff scientist of the Ethnology and Anthropology
Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, expressed her hope that the
edition of the book "Russia between "Nord-Ost" and Beslan" will attract
attention of the society to the problem of hate language and problems of
the Northern Caucasus. She emphasized that the book will become a useful
manual for regional journalists who "do not see the acuteness of this
problem". In the nearest future it is planned the presentation of the
book on the interregional conferences led by the MBHR and the Union of
Journalists of Russia. The author is planning to publish another book
illustrating how the federal mass media showed the terrorist act in
Beslan.