DUSHANBE, August 15, 2013, Asia-Plus – A number of Tajik creative unions and separate individuals have filed a lawsuit against Asia-Plus newspaper editor Olga Tutubalina in a court in Dushanbe’s Firdavsi district.

Tajik Writers’ Union, and the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan are acting as the main plaintiffs and Tajik Painters’ Union, Tajik Architects’ Union, Tajik Composers’ Union as well as Candidate of Sciences in Medicine Dilbar Abdiyeva, Doctor of Sciences in Art History Askarali Rajabov and poet Hikmat Rahmatov are co-plaintiffs.

They ask for 200,000 somoni as compensation for moral damage.  According to them, the amount will be donated to orphanages.

The preliminary session is set for August 19.

The case stems from the article by Olga Tutubalina published in the newspaper on May 29 this year.  In her article about Tajik intelligentsia, Ms. Tutubalina used citation from Lenin’s letter to Maxim Gorky of September 15, 1919, “The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation.  In fact they are not its brains but its shit.”

Plaintiffs say the article by Olga Tutubalina insulted honor and dignity as well as reputation of a large social group of people and caused moral damage to them.  Besides, they consider that Ms. Tutubalina distorted Lenin’s words in her article.

For her part, Ms. Tutubalina said that she did not mean to insult anyone.  At the same time, she insists she has nothing to apologize for.

On July 5, the mentioned creative unions filed the lawsuit against Ms. Olga Tutubalina in the Dushanbe Economic Court but it refused to consider the case saying that such cases are outside its jurisdiction.