“Noah’s Ark” International Film Festival in Grozny

City centre of Grozny

The first Noah’s Ark international film festival will take place in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, from 13 to 19 June of this year. Among the submissions will be films about the life of people belonging to different confessions created by film directors from many countries. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov says that the film festival in Grozny will promote the development of tolerance and toleration. There is no doubt that the new film forum will be an event of great significance in Chechnya’s cultural life, that it will raise its prestige, and bring peoples closer to each other. The ideology of films that will take part in the contest will contribute to spiritual-moral uplift, President Kadyrov emphasised.

The famous Russian film director Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky will head the festival. He invited many well-known Russian and foreign cinematographers to work as jurors. The famous Georgian film director Revaz Chheidze has already agreed to head the jurors’ team, which will include many famous film directors and producers such as Ovidio Salazar from the United States, Gala Halil from Egypt, Line Halvorsen from Norway, and many others.

The festival’s press office says that more than 100 films from 30 countries are in Moscow now. All these are feature films, animated cartoons, and also popular-science, documentary, and historical films. A special commission will select the best works for the contest programme. There will be much work to do, and it will be difficult enough. The point is that well-known filmmakers, participants in prestigious international film festivals, including the Cannes Festival, made many of these films. There are also Oscar prizewinners among them. “Our task today is to make a maximum effort so that everybody will be able to say that the organisers of the film forum have done good work”, Dikalu Muzakayev, the Chechen Minister of Culture, said. He added that the success of the festival in Grozny will enable Chechnya to integrate not only into the Russian cultural arena, but, also into the cultural space of the whole world.

The preparations are in full swing now. Chechen TV channels are actively promoting the upcoming festival, providing information about the participants and demonstrating their former works to filmgoers.

8 April 2008

Tatiana Zavyalova

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=25402&cid=62&p=08.04.2008

Bishop Mark Of Yegoryevsk Says We Should Not Mock Any Religious Values

Geert Wilders, producer of the film Fitna

The values of any religion should not be mocked. Today all people, no matter what religion they belong to, must be aware that to respect other people’s beliefs means to contribute to peace. This is how Russian Bishop Mark of Yegoryevsk reacted to the information that an Iranian Muslim organisation intends to make an anti-Christian film.

Amid the continuing anti-Muslim protests in Europe, the Iranian non-governmental organisation Islam and Christianity started production of a documentary called Beyond Fitna to respond to Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ provocative 17-minute film Fitna. Despite the fact that the film was officially banned in the Hague, it hit the Internet on 27 March and evoked immediate public outcry. The NGO’s documentary Beyond Fitna deals with the incitement of violence in the Bible. Muslims believe that the book deemed holy by Christians today is a distorted version of the original Bible. The documentary will feature film clips from crimes committed by extremist Christians under the inspirations of the said Bible teachings, and aims to provide a response to the allegations made by Pope Benedict XVI, who called Islam a religion of violence after misunderstanding certain Koranic verses.

The Moscow Patriarchate has decisively condemned the Dutch anti-Muslim film and also regretted that Muslims decided to answer European provocateurs in a similar way. “Revenge is destructive”, Bishop Mark said. “The Iranian authorities, having announced their intention to make an anti-Christian film, became victims of disinformation. Those who drew caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad and spoke negatively about Islam are people who actually know nothing about Christianity, even if their grandparents belonged to this religion. Today they are against Islam, and tomorrow they may redirect their aggression against Christians”.

Bishop Mark thinks that if Iran releases its anti-Christian film, the consequences may be very heartbreaking. “For millions of people, spiritual values are too important to let other people mock them”. He also said he hoped that Islam and Christianity would change its position and they would not release the film.

9 April 2008

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=25460&cid=59&p=09.04.2008

Russia says that both the UDI and Constitution of Kosovo are Illegitimate

Russian Foreign Ministry building

The separatist Parliament of Kosovo passed what it calls a national constitution, planning to put this into effect in mid-June. The paper was put together by experts in the United States in cooperation with leaders of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians. Emerging three weeks after the region’s UDI, it largely follows a pan by the Finnish diplomat Marti Ahtisaari for supervised sovereignty in the breakaway province. Most importantly, this plan has never been legitimised by the United Nations.

We have an official Russian reaction to the reports of this new constitution. Mr Andrei Krivtsov is a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Minister, and he said, “The Kosovo constitution is an attempt to give a semblance of legitimacy to something that is utterly illegitimate. The UDI of Kosovo and the support of it by powers in the West flagrantly violate the United Nations Charter, Resolution 1244 of the United Nations Security Council, and the founding principles of Europe’s OSCE security organisation. Argumentation that the Kosovo constitution proceeds from the Ahtisaari plan is a rhetorical exercise to base this constitution on a unilateral scheme that has never been approved by the UN. Nor, for that matter, by the European Union, as the EU is divided over Kosovo”.

The constitution is powerless to make a legitimate international entity out of separatist-ruled Kosovo. The Kosovo Serbs dispute it, leading to tensions which may result in independence demands for the Serb-populated enclave of Mitrovica. The Serbs in the province are likely to insist on their inclusion in the Serbian state. The separatists cry this would destroy the territorial integrity of their Kosovo paradise. The territorial integrity of Serbia is of little importance for them.

9 April 2008

Yelizaveta Isakova

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=25469&cid=56&p=09.04.2008

Russia May Voice No Confidence in the Hague Tribunal

The Peace Palace, the headquarters of the International Court of Justice in The Hague (South Holland Province) THE NETHERLANDS

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The Russian Foreign Ministry says Moscow was shocked to hear about the enormities that members of the Kosovo Liberation Army committed against Serb civilians in Kosovo. This was a response of the Foreign Ministry to the publication of memoirs written by Carla del Ponte, the former prosecutor-general of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The book lashed out at many leading members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, including Kosovar prime minister Hashim Thaçi and Ramush Haradinaj, who was recently acquitted of all guilt by the Hague Tribunal. It says those men played a role in the abduction and torture of ethnic Serbs. Yet, what was worse, body parts from murdered Serbs were offered for sale as part of the black-market trade in human organs for transplant. Russia asked, in a formal letter to the International Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, whether the Tribunal’s aware of the crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in Kosovo and what it’s done to investigate them.

The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was established to make an unbiased inquiry into what happened in former Yugoslavia . The fragmentation of the once-flourishing Yugoslav state was accompanied by a bloody civil war. Western advocates of the idea of an international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia thought in terms of the Nuremberg tribunal, which held hearings into the cases of Nazi criminals in 1945, which earned worldwide appreciation for its efforts. However, there’s a big difference between the two international tribunals. Crimes are committed by all participants in a civil war. Ethnic Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Kosovar Albanians… all of them committed crimes and were, in turn, victimised in the confusion and turmoil in the Balkans. The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was to have set an example of an unbiased approach to cases under its consideration and irreproachable decision-making.

Nevertheless, it always seemed biased because it always aimed to punish the late Yugoslav state and its legal successor Serbia. That explains the rash proclamation of Kosovar sovereignty and the opening of a US Embassy in Kosovo. Boris Shmelyov of the Moscow Centre for Comparative Political Studies saw the latest developments in Kosovo as “a part of an effort for the formation of a ‘new world order’. The beautiful words about democracy hide the interests of the leading countries of the West, first and foremost, the United States of America”. What Ms del Ponte says in her book and the recent scandalous acquittal of Kosovar field commander Ramush Haradinaj are links in the chain of events. They prove that the International Tribunal dishonoured its purpose. Furthermore, because it’s repeatedly doubted whether the Hague Tribunal takes an unbiased view of cases under its consideration, Russia may finally voice no confidence in that court of justice.

9 April 2008

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=25455&cid=56&p=09.04.2008