DUSHANBE, February 22, 2014, Asia-Plus – A court in Dushanbe’s Firdavsi district continued considering a lawsuit over an article written by the
Asia-Plus
newspaper editor Olga Tutubalina on February 21. Hearing of arguments continued.
Representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe, the OSCE office in Tajikistan, Tajik Branch of the Open Society Institute/ Assistance Foundation (OSI/AF-Tajikistan), Tajik human rights activist Oynihol Bobonazarova and journalists attended the hearing.
The court is expected to pass sentence on this case on February 24.
We will recall that five Tajik creative unions and thee separate individuals have filed a lawsuit against
Asia-Plus
newspaper editor Olga Tutubalina in the court in Dushanbe’s Firdavsi district. They ask for 200,000 somoni as compensation for moral damage.
The case stems from the article by Olga Tutubalina published in the newspaper on May 29, 2013. In her article about Tajik intelligentsia, Ms. Tutubalina used citation from Lenin’s letter to Maxim Gorky of September 15, 1919, “The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.”
Plaintiffs say the article by Olga Tutubalina insulted honor and dignity as well as reputation of a large social group of people and caused moral damage to them. Besides, they consider that Ms. Tutubalina distorted Lenin’s words in her article.
For her part, Ms. Tutubalina said that she did not mean to insult anyone. At the same time, she insists she has nothing to apologize for.
