President Medvedev asks media to be careful in choosing vocabulary.

UFA (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has
urged the mass media to be more scrupulous in selecting the terms they
use, and not to call black things white.
"The role of the mass media in maintaining interethnic unity is huge,"
he said at a meeting of the State Council Presidium on Friday. As an
example he cited the term "hate speech".
"Unfortunately, hate speech has made its way into the media," he said.
"Some of the media use the language of hatred, maybe not even paying
special attention to it - because no one wants to destroy one's own
country, of course - so they may be doing so without stopping to think how
it hurts people who belong to a particular ethnic group."
"Generally speaking, far more attention must be paid to the language,"
Medvedev said. "I sometimes watch our programs (on TV), and periodically I
hear there some terms that are fundamentally unacceptable, and sometimes
there are even definitions quite alien to our ethnic and territorial
division, administrative-territorial division. Quite often there are used
cliches and terms from the vocabulary of the separatists and extremists,"
the president said. He mentioned some quotes from a newscast: "Today there
has been detained the Emir of this or that Jamaat-something."
"What sort of thing is that Emir? What sort of jamaat are they talking
about? We all know that they are not fighters for the faith, but killers
and gangsters. They have no jamaats, they just have their dirty and stinky
caves where they hide. They are not emirs of any kind, but monsters who
kill children and women. Yet this is repeated again and again," said angry
Medvedev.
In his opinion, such definitions are remembered at the "subconscious
level."
"Therefore, we must certainly pay attention to the terminology. One
cannot call black things white. There are laws of propaganda, which
ultimately, at the subconscious level, begin to work against us," said the
president.
Medvedev also touched upon the issue of legal liability for the
violations related to the instigation of ethnic and religious strife. He
did not rule out tighter responsibility for such actions. However,
according to his estimates, the problem is largely about how prosecutors,
the investigation and the judge understand the sanctions. "If such crimes
are regarded as serious, then the punishment for them must be serious. And
if it is seen as a trifle, for instance, the man wrote something on the
Internet, who cares, he has not killed anyone after all - then a suspended
sentence will do," Medvedev said.
However, he believes that quite "often this kind of activity creates
grounds for enormous conflicts, including the most grave and sometimes
bloody conflicts." "Qualification is a matter of investigation and trial.
But I would like to draw the attention of the colleagues who supervise
legality in this area, to the fact that these crimes may provide a basis
for other ones, of special gravity. And this is what we musts proceed from
in making decisions on the qualification of responsibility," said Medvedev.

.Last group of 200 Russian tourists to fly back home from Egypt Sat.

MOSCOW, February 12 (Itar-Tass) -- About 200 Russian tourists are to
come back home from Egypt on Saturday evening. As the press officer of the
federal tourist agency Rosturizm, Oleg Moiseyev, has said, about 200
Russian tourists will board the final charter flight of the Red Wings
airlines at Hurghada Airport at about 15:00 local time, and approximately
at 20:00 Moscow time the plane is scheduled to land at Moscow's Vnukovo
airport.
"Alongside the tourists representatives of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and Rosturizm will return home, too," he said.
The spokesman said that "in the evening of Thursday, February 10, in
Egypt there were about 300 tourists from Russia, respectively, about 100
returned home on Friday, 11 February."
Moiseyev added that "in Egypt there will remain at least ten tourists
from Russia, so-called 'individuals travelers' who had not bought any
vouchers through travel agents." Among them, he speculated, are "divers
and those who have refused to leave the resort early, but they are very
few."
Moiseyev also noted that that would be the final charter flight.
Regular flights from Egypt will continue, but from Cairo, possibly with a
stopover in Hurghada.
He recalled that "on January 29 Rosturizm established an
inter-departmental center that constantly monitored the situation
involving Russian tourists at the resorts in Egypt." In addition, he said,
"the center opened hot phone lines and callers were free to have detailed
information about what was happening at the resorts and in the
administrative centers of Egypt, as well as to obtain legal advice on the
cancellation of contracts with travel agencies."
Moiseyev also stressed that "Rosturizm and Foreign Ministry officials
were quick to fly to the resorts to work with the tourists and promote
their return home."
The Russian Union of the Travel Industry promised that "those tourists
who bought tours to Egypt, but had no chance to fly, can either choose a
different site for vacation or receive compensation from the travel
agencies."
However, tour operators have warned that paying cash compensation to
all tourists at a time would be impossible and some may have to wait up to
several months to have their money back.

-0-str