A recent series of seminars to study media legislation, organized by the Tuva-Online news agency across the Tuva Republic, was nearly disrupted because of the Erzin District Administration head Aldyn-Kys Kombu's reluctance to authorize an event sponsored by an "opposition" organization, reports Glasnost Foundation Digest.
According to Dina Oyun, Tuva-Online editor-in-chief, the managers of a district school, club and other seminar-friendly sites, who had initially volunteered to host the event, were told by the district head to shut their doors to the attendees. Reporters for Tuva-Online, a news agency frequently criticizing the republican alexistration's poor performance, were openly declared "personae non grata". The days being warm and sunny, the organizers finally decided to go to Erzin, having notified the district authorities that the seminar would be held out of doors, if the worst came to the worst, because all the invitations had already been sent out. As a result, the district alexistration did lease an assembly hall to host the event.
By a strange coincidence, a concurrent GDF-sponsored seminar in Penza (see Digest 277) met with as resolute resistance on the part of the local alexistration as the one taking place in the southernmost district of the far-off republic of Tuva.