(CJES/IFEX) – On 21 April 2006, a court in the Obtyabrskiy district of Belgorod began hearing a lawsuit filed against “Moscovskiy Komsomolets v Belgorode” newspaper by Belgorod region Governor Evgeniy Savchenko for the protection of his honour, dignity and business reputation. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief Aleksandr Kalutskiy told CJES that the governor’s lawsuit is over an […]
(CJES/IFEX) – On 21 April 2006, a court in the Obtyabrskiy district of Belgorod began hearing a lawsuit filed against “Moscovskiy Komsomolets v Belgorode” newspaper by Belgorod region Governor Evgeniy Savchenko for the protection of his honour, dignity and business reputation.
The newspaper’s editor-in-chief Aleksandr Kalutskiy told CJES that the governor’s lawsuit is over an article entitled, “When Law Triumphs”, which was published in the March issue of the newspaper. The article focused on a plot of land of 32 hectares in the Prohorov district of the region, where there is a railway branch-line to the Yakovlev mine. The governor first re-designated these arable lands as lands suitable only for use as transportation throughfares, and then allowed a railway to be built on them. The owners of the lands were not paid any compensation. A dispute over the owner’s rights in relation to this land plot has been in progress since 2004.
“In March, after publication of this article, the Belgorod regional department of internal affairs initiated a criminal libel case pursuant to the request of Governor E. Savchenko. Governor Savchenko believes the statements in the article that read, “he turned a blind eye to illegal construction of a railway, as well as allowed a transfer of lands from one category into another through criminal methods and falsification and forgery of documents,” were libellous. However, the entire article was based on the decisions of the courts. The owners of the lands had filed lawsuits in Moscow city courts. In 2005, the Tverskoy court of Moscow city, pursuant to the lawsuit of one of the lands’ owners, ruled that the decree of the Government of Belgorod region on the transfer of lands from the agricultural category into the transport category was invalid. A similar decision was made in the Zuzin court of Moscow city, pursuant to a lawsuit of another land owner. On the basis of these courts’ decisions, the article was published, Kalutskiy told CJES.
Nevertheless, on 21 April the Obtyabrskiy court ruled in favor of Governor Savchenko. Now the newspaper must publish a retraction and pay a fine of 10,000 rubles (approx. US$365).
Kalutskiy said that the court sitting was held with a preconceived notion of what the final ruling ought to be. “I have an impression that the judge came to the sitting with his decision already prepared. He refused our lawyer’s petition to present the rulings of two courts of Moscow city in favour of the owners of the land. He also refused to allow presentation of the conclusions of a linguistic expert that there was nothing that would smear the honour and dignity of the Governor in the article,” noted the newspaper’s editor-in-chief.
He underlined that such a decision of the court was predictable since no court in the region would rule against the governor.
