Moscow

THE PUTTING A STOP TO THE ONLY RUSSIAN NON-STATE NATIONAL TV CHANNEL "TV-6" THREATENS PLURALISM AND RIGHT OF FREE ACCESS TO OBJECTIVE INFORMATION FOR RUSSIAN PEOPLE.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

On January 21, 2002, due to serious legal violations, the only Russian independent national channel, TV-6, ceased its existence.

We fully agree with those Russian public and political leaders that this decision had a purely political motivation and was made by our government within the frame of a certain political ideology.

We find the situation around TV-6 absolutely inappropriate and believe that illegal measures that have been taken against this channel deprive millions of our citizens of the important source of independent and objective information, have a negative impact on freedom of speech, informational, social and political pluralism in Russia.

We think that during this act of liquidation several important legal regulations were violated, as well as generally-accepted international documents regarding human rights, European convention articles on human rights and basic rights for freedom and regulation legislation.

We appeal to your consciences and ask you to turn your eyes to all that is happening now with freedom of speech and access to information in Russia.

Yours sincerely,

Svetlana Gannushkina, Committee "Civil assistance";
Lev Ponomarev, All-Russian Movement "For Human Rights";
Svetlana Chuvilova and coworkers of human rights defense organization "Hot Line";
Igor Yakovlenko, "Russian Journalists Union";
Yury Samodurov, Public Center and Museum named after Andrey Sakharov;
Ernest Cherny, "Ecology and Human Rights";
Karina Moskalenko, "International Protection Center";
Vladimir Shakleen, Ural Human Rights Defense Association