aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] France rejects request for Putin to be stripped ofLegion of Honour

["Walter R Iwaskiw" <wiwa@loc.gov>]

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=21207 

French Council of State rejects request for Putin to be stripped of
Legion of Honour

Reporters Without Borders said it was disappointed to learn yesterday
that the French Council of State has rejected its request for Russian
leader Vladimir Putin to be stripped of the Grand Cross of the Legion of
Honour, which President Jacques Chirac awarded him on 22 September.

(...)

In a release on 20 October, Reporters Without Borders said: *We do
not recognise France*s fundamental values in Putin*s discourse -
when he says, for example, that he wants to wipe out Chechen terrorists
in the shit-house, or when he describes the independent press as means
of mass disinformation and tools for combatting the state, or when he
tells a French journalist who asks him about Chechnya to come and get
circumcised in Moscow so nothing grows back.*

A total of 21 journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya, have been
murdered in Russia with complete impunity since Putin became president
in March 2000, while Chechnya continues to be a new black hole.