RUSSIA: Russia's parliamentarians yesterday proposed tough new security laws that will blank out TV coverage of future terrorist outrages and give the security services sweeping new powers, writes Chris Stephen, in Moscow
A total of 40 new anti-terror laws will, if enacted, give unprecedented powers to the security service, the FSB, allowing it to control the media, ban political rallies and impose transport restrictions on ordinary citizens.
The action comes hot on the heels of draconian new rules by President Putin earlier this month which cancelled elections for regional governors and limited the number of minority parties who can win seats in parliament.
Parliament's action follows a summer of terrorist attacks that have seen bombs in Moscow, two airliners destroyed and 350 people massacred at a high school in the southern town of Beslan.
These attacks have left ordinary Russians traumatised, and the Beslan massacre, in which more than 150 children died, has become in many ways the country's own September 11th.
As well as the new anti-terrorism laws, a powerful parliamentary commission has begun looking into the circumstances surrounding the Beslan massacre, including the conduct of the security forces.
Centrepiece of the new anti-terror legislation will be a bill that will prevent TV and radio stations from covering terror attacks as they happen.
One of the bill's sponsors, Mr Alexander Kruglov, an MP with the nationalist Rodina (Motherland) party, said the bill is necessary because "a terrorist attack loses its meaning" if it gets no publicity. The idea of denying terrorists the "oxygen of publicity" is not new in Russia.
Two years ago parliament called for such a law after 149 hostages died in the siege of the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow, but Mr Putin vetoed the bill. This time around he is more likely to agree.
A package of rules, named "On Counteracting Terrorism", will give the director of the FSB the power to declare a Terror Alert, without needing permission from either president or prime minister. A Terror Alert would give the security forces unprecedented powers to arrest suspects, impose travel restrictions and refuse permission for political rallies.
The main opposition party, the Communist Party, said government policies were partly to blame for the terror attacks and the failure to end the Chechnya war.
Party leader Mr Gennady Zyuganov said: "The main reason for what is happening in the country lies in the political line that has been pursued all these years."
Civil liberties groups are also watching the moves with alarm, worried that they will roll back democratic advances in Russia.
With the pro-Putin United Russia party dominating the parliament, the proposals are expected to become law in the coming weeks.