CZECH MP WRITES TO US COUNTERPARTS OVER WORK CONDITIONS IN RFE/RL

AZG DAILY
16-02-2010

Mass media

Prague, Feb 12 (CTK) – Czech senator Jaromir Stetina has written
a letter to his U.S. counterparts in which he complaints about
discrimination against some foreign employees of the Prague-seated
and U.S-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and demands
a remedy of the situation.

In his letter, a copy of which CTK received, Stetina says the work
contracts do not sufficiently protect the station’s foreign employees.

Due to the RFE/RL management’s discriminatory labour policy,
incompatible with Prague’s international commitments, the Czech
Republic has been accused of violating fundamental rights at the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Stetina writes.

The employees who have complained in Strasbourg about discrimination
include Croatian journalist Snjezana Pelivan, whom the RFE/RL sacked
without giving any reason five years ago.

The Czech Constitutional Court previously turned down Pelivan’s
complaint.

According to Pelivan, the RFE/RL employees who come from neither the
Czech Republic nor the U.S. are insufficiently protected against
unfounded instant dismissal, which means they are discriminated
against.

Pelivan says the station’s foreign staff are intentionally kept in
a legal vacuum without court protection either in the U.S. or in the
Czech Republic.

Another foreigner to complain is Armenian Anna Karapetian who, too,
was dismissed from the RFE/RL some time ago.

The RFE/RL is a radio station broadcasting news and information in
28 languages to countries where free press is banned or not enough
developed.

Stetina has recently been catapulted to the centre of media attention
in connection with his announcement that he helps a man from Chechnya
who was denied Czech asylum and had to leave the Czech Republic by
February 7.

According to Stetina, the Czech asylum policy fails to help people
from the Caucasus region who are threatened with persecution or even
death in Russia.

Stetina, 69, was Czech Lidove noviny daily’s correspondent in Moscow
in the 1990s. He also covered the then Russia war against Chechnya. In
December 1999 he and another eight journalists spent nine days in
the besieged Chechen capital Grozny.