European people lack information on events in South Ossetia, European MPs assert

Julietto Chieza, European MP from the Socialist Group and a member of the foreign and defence commissions of the European Parliament, and Tatiana Zhdanok, European MP and deputy of Latvian Seim, believe that the information blockade of the news about South Ossetia should be broken through. They told journalists about it on October 27 before their departure from "Vladikavkaz" Airport in Northern Ossetia.

"Many European MPs lack sufficient information to understand the true state of things," said Julietto Chieza, "and, consequently, the version presented by western media prevails, and this version is very prejudiced. Media, I tell you as a journalist myself, fail to properly inform citizens."

On October 25-26, a group of European MPs, accompanied by Dmitri Medoev, plenipotentiary of the Republic of South Ossetia in the Russian Federation, visited Tskhinvali. 

"From the very beginning, people in the West were assured that it was Russia who attacked and tried to seize Georgia. It was the stand taken by the media. Now, several months later, certain facts come out. And even the European Parliament admits that it was Georgia who attacked South Ossetia. However, the roots and the history of this war, the history of mutual relations of South Ossetia and Georgia are still absolutely unknown. And if we add that anti-Russian moods prevail, especially in the countries of the Eastern Europe, we see that the most of the people in the West do not know what happens and cannot clear out," Mr Chieza said at the meeting.

According to Tatiana Zhdanok, what she saw in Tskhinvali, her meetings and talks with local residents and local officials enable her now to tell a lot to her colleagues and broad TV audience.

"Certainly, we saw all that on TV screens, but when you are here, you have quite different feelings," she has emphasized. "European MPs depend in many respects on their electorate, but the latter was fed with simplified cliche that Russia was guilty of everything. But all the same, the MPs are highly qualified politicians, they respect themselves; and now we see more and more depth and understanding in their speeches that it was not so simple."