International Internet Censorship: The propaganda war – who is the winner?

Kavkazcenter.com declares that it is an independent Islamic news agency. Hosting the server in Sweden costs about two hundred euro a month, and Storsjо pays presently the money from his own pocket. “I feel that I was right, and I don’t want to give up”, he explains.

But what kind of information service is it all about, as it got the Minister of the interior Kari Rajamаki (social democrat) and the security police to adopt censorship?

A fast analysis of the content reveals that the question is about coarse over reaction. Kavkazcenter does not foment war or hatred against Russians, even though they call the Russian troops bandits. The site tells about the war from a Chechen view, and tries to correct the one-sided information given by Russian main media.

On Tuesday the main news on the Kavkazcenter site was a broad analysis of the situation in Caucasus, made by a researcher at the Carnegie research center. The story had originally been published in the daily paper Moscow News. Below this article there was a story about the Russian Mothers of Soldiers organization, which starts a party and will try to get seats in the Duma.

On Tuesday Kavkazcenter also published a news report from Helsingin Sanomat last Sunday. In this article was told about reopening of the Chechen web site, and about the discussion raised by shutting down the site. In the international news, the main subject was anyway the war in Iraq.

The main conclusion of the Kavkazcenter regarding the situation in Chechnya is the same as in the main media in the West: President Vladimir Putin has reached a blind alley. The cruel invasion has led to reprisal raids around Russia, and there is no visible ending of that.

http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/article.php?id=3256