21/11/2006 (Agence Europe) - At the end of the hearing on 21 November of the EP's Human Rights Committee, Democratici di sinistra MEP, Pasqualina Napoletano, said that he was very concerned about the “very worrying accounts” made by MEPs on the worsening human rights situation in Russia. She said that they had heard that, “the lives of human rights activists are threatened by ultra-nationalist groups who call for their murders on the internet, in total impunity' Vitaly Yarochevskiy, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, of Novaya Gazeta, where Anna Politkovskaia, the journalist recently assassinated, worked, deplored the fact that in Russia, “television channels resemble clones and do not provide news but simply transmit the regime's propaganda”. Three weeks away from the EU/Russia summit on 14-15 December, MEPs are calling for EU leaders to urgently tackle the problem of respect for human rights, with president Putin. (mg)