WEST GERMAN TV REPORT ON AFGHANISTAN 'SLANDER'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96R01136R002605120027-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 8, 2010
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: August 2, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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III. f Aug 85 U S S R I N T E R N A T I O N A L A F F A I R S D 1
WEST GERMAN TV REPORT ON AFGHANISTAN 'SLANDER'
Moscow TV Correspondent
LD022246 Moscow Television Service in Russian 1700 GMT 2 Aug 85
[From the "Vremya" newscast]
[Text] West German television has shown a program which has coarsely distorted the role
of the Soviet Union in events taking place in the DRA. This report is commented upon by
our correspondent Mikhail Leschinskiy:
[Begin Leshchinskiy report] I have just flown in from Afghanistan and have brought back
reportage about the atrocities of the dushmans, about the crimes of the hired killers
and the victims of the undeclared war. Believe me, it was difficult for me and for
Aleksey Badadzhan, the cameraman, to see this; it was difficult to film; and it is
difficult now for me to tell you about it. But this is something that has to be done
in order to expose the intrigues of Western propaganda like the FRG television program.
On this occasion the Sued-Westfunk television studio invited three doctors who had
returned from Afghanistan to take part in a report feature. In Afghanistan they had
allegedly been giving assistance to freedom fighters. But, as far as the activity of
these FRG citizens with the dushman bands in the DRA is concerned, it is sufficient to
use one very apt expression: spies in white coats. These people, as is apparent, had
also received an additional task from the CIA, that of slandering the role of the Soviet
Union in events on Afghan soil. And this is how far they went in what they said, and
I quote: The Soviet troops are destroying peaceful settlements in a planned way, along
with schools, hospitals and mosques. And more than this, just listen, the Russians are
deliberately maiming Afghan children, so that they will be unable to fight for freedom
in the future. What can one say to such a thing? Anyone who has been in Afghanistan,
anyone who knows the true state of affairs on that long-suffering land, becomes indig-
nant when he hears such things, sincerely indignant. And now I am going to show you
some documentary film, which ought to have a place at an international tribunal where
they try crimes against humanity.
Dushman mortars exploded in the old quarter of Kabul, the most thickly populated dis
trict. People and their meagre homes were destroyed. And here are the consequences of
a mortar which went through the roof of the school named after the Afghan poetess
Rabe'a-e Balkhi. Here is a schoolgirl who saw her classmates die on that terrible day.
We know that this was done by bandits who receive money from the Americans, she says.
[Video shows burning embers of buildings being hosed down; people gathered outside; hole
in the roof of a building, class of schoolgirls reading books at desks, schoolgirl
speaking into microphone before the camera]
Those mercenaries who have assembled a home-made bomb according to American instructions
think it's very funny. Where is it going to go off? Perhaps it'll again be in a shop
where there are always lots of people. Or perhaps in a children's playground, as has
happened more than once already. [Video shows about half a dozen men, outdoors,
assembling bombs from sticks of dynamite; damaged buildings; and injured children]
Nor do the killers spare hospitals. Here the victims include not just defenseless
people, but doctors, too, who give them assistance. And we took these pictures in the
Panjsher Valley. It was here that a prison belonging to the dushmans was discovered.
They shot 146 people here when they withdrew into the mountains, people who were sub-
jected to terrible torture before they were shot.
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III. 6 Aug 85 C 2 USSR-INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
NORTHEAST ASIA
In the meantime,, Japan' s. interest in such an important issue as an end to nuclear
testing, which would sharply slow down the nuclear arms race, can be called vital without,
exaggeration.. Nakasone granted the interview to the American TV network shortly before
the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima.and Nagasaki-tragedy, which claimed the lives of
more than 300,000 of his compatriots. Many Japanese people who were exposed to radiation
as a result of the American A-bomb blasts continue to die. Their children and grand-
children die from radiation sickness.
The 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki tragedy is another reminder of the
pressing need to enforce a total ban on nuclear weapons and scrap them. And an end to
nuclear testing is a right way to this goal.
So when, ahead of this anniversary marked by all people of goodwill in their determinate
tion to put an end to the nuclear.arms race on earth and keep it out of space, Mr
Nakasone speaks negatively of the Soviet Union's decision to unilaterally stop any
nuclear explosions, his position appears more than strange.
There are, it is clear, forces in Japan, which would like not only to forget themselves
the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima-and Nagasaki but also to erase the memory of
those terrible events from the people's memory.
But the overwhelming majority of the Japanese people are active in the campaign to
make certain that nuclear blasts no longer threaten people on earth and that the horrors
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recur never again. This resolve of their people has been
expressed, for example, by Japanese young men and women taking part in the 12th World
Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow. Yuzi Egusa from Hiroshima, who has survived
the tragedy of that city, said the Soviet initiative is remarkable. As a representative
of the atomic blast victims, he believes that the very existence of the barbarous
weapons of mass annihilation is inadmissible.
GRISHIN RECEIVES DPRK WORKER'S PARTY OFFICIAL
PM051511 Moscow PRAVDA in Russian 4 Aug 85 First Edition p 4
[TASS report: "Meeting Held"]
[Text] On 2 August, V.V. Grishin, member of.the CPSU Central Committee Politburo and
first-secretary of Moscow CPSU Gorkom, received So Yun-sok, member of the Korean Worker's
Party Central Committee Political Bureau and responsible secretary of.Pyongyang City
Korean Worker's Party Committee, who is in Moscow as an honored festival guest.
Kwon Hui-kyong, DPRK ambassador to the USSR, took part in the conversation.
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III. 6 Aug 85 D 2 USSR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
SOUTH ASIA
Yes, the world must know this, must see this and condemn it, as was done by the young
people at the Moscow world festival during the work of the international tribunal.
One of the witnesses at this tribunal was Abdol Saber, an Afghan boy who lost his hands
when they were torn off by a bomb disguised as a fountain pen. [Begin Saber in Dari with
superimposed translation read by Leschinskiy] I picked up this pen, he says, to draw
or write something. But as soon as I took off the cap to look at the pen it exploded.
I have to add that similar pens of American manufacture have been shown to us journal-
ists more than once at Kabul press conference. Those are the facts, those are the
documents. [End report]
The only thing left for me to do is to reveal the mechanism by which fabrications like
those shown to its viewers by West German television are prepared. Indeed, this has
been done repeatedly during interrogations at the organs of state security of
Afghanistan, said that besides other tasks the CIA instructed him to photograph and to
send back to Pakistan the consequences of acts of sabotage carried out by the dushmans,
so that subsequently these could be depicted as the actions of Soviet and Afghan
troops.
PRAVDA Condemnation
PM051155 Moscow PRAVDA in Russian 4 Aug 85 First Edition p 5
["Provocateurs From ARD" -- PRAVDA headline]
ARD, one of the West German television channels, late in July decided to "impress" West
German T.V. viewers with appalling "atrocities" allegedly perpetrated by Soviet troops
in Afghanistan.
To back up the claims, numerous photographs of "victims and destruction" were shown,
and the program host resorted to unscrupulous lies, asserting that it is the Soviet
and Afghan troops which "destroy on a planned basis", schools hospitals and mosques
while Afghan children are taken to the USSR for education in a "pro-Soviet" spirit.
Absurdities of this kind were apparently taken from the arsenals of Goebbels whose
methods some people in Bonn would like to revive.
If the makers of the television programme had a little conscience, they could have
cited accurate data, not "information" spun out of thin air, about crimes committed by
cutthroats from counter-revolutionary gangs. In seven years, the bandits destroyed
1,814 schools, 906 farmers' cooperatives, more than forty hospitals and murdered an
inestimable number of civilians who had just started enjoying the gains of people's
power: freedom, land, literacy. The bandits killed more than 200 mullahs and ulemas,
some of them inside mosques. It is no accident that when bandits are forced out of
populated localities they held for some time, they leave behind piles of corpses of
people they shot dead or tortured to death, tortue chambers, and caves.
Undoubtedly, the ARD programme is an unscrupulous falsification. The ARD liars or those
who stand behind them fabricated out of documentaries and photographs of brutalities
committed by bandit units on Afghan soil alleged "Soviet atrocities". It is also
well known that bandits dressed in disguise played scenes of murder allegedly
"perpetrated by the Russians" in front of cine-cameras of American and some other
Western special services. At the same time, bandits were engaged in their dirty
business, raiding and killing Afghan civilians, placing explosives in cinema houses,
markets, large shops, and other crowded places.
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III. 6 Aug 85 D 3 USSR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
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One feels revulsion and utter indignation over the fact that the:West German television
company which claims respectability agreed to air the crude falsification of this kind,
and that television journalist F. Alt, who had been previously trenchantly criticized
in public by extreme right-wing circles for some 'leftist tilt', was the host.
Undoubtedly, the point at issue is a coordinated hostile action by the Central
Intelligence Agency, West German, and NATO special services.
It is clear to any unbiased observer that the true source of the suffering of the
Afghan people is the undeclared war waged against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
by gangs of bandits who are intructed, armed, and directed by the CIA.
Haven't they in Bonn heard about rewards for the bandits' "work"? Five-seven thousand
afghanis are paid for the killing of one Afghan Army soldier, ten-fifteen thousand
for a party activist. This financial year alone, the American Administration set aside
280 million dollars for the training and arming of Afghan counter-revolution. There
is also a contribution by Bonn, and not only in deutschemarks, to the bloody and
destructive war waged by the enemies of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. This
is, by the way, well known to some members of the West German Bundestag.
If not for assistance by the limited Soviet military contingent, much more blood would
be split on Afghan soil. The ARD falsifiers want to ascribe to the Soviet soldier,what
is totally alien to him. He protects the civilian population, safeguards the work of
Afghan people. Those whom ARD portrays as "freedom-fighters" are in fact hired killers
and bandits.
The makers of the programme assert that someone prevents them from seeing the "true
picture" in Afghanistan. That is another lie. Many Western journalists and observers
have been to Afghanistan. It is their reports which show the true picture, not what
ARD portrays from other people's prompting.
U.S. POLICY AGGRAVATING AFGHAN SITUATION
TA022225 Moscow in Dari to Afghanistan 1500 GMT 2 Aug 85
[From the "From Moscow's Viewpoint" program; Aleksey Metrov commentary]
[Text] Dear listeners, our commentator, Aleksey Metrov, has written that the Hong Kong
based FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW magazine, no doubt ironically, wrote that during the
past year the price of weapons in Peshawar's black market rose approximately twofold.
This magazine drew the conclusion that the events around Afghanistan caused an unpre-
cedented flow of arms to Pakistan.
In this connection the reaction by Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, Pakistan's minister of foreign
affairs, who recently returned from America, to a question by one of the correspondents
as to whether he discussed with U.S. representatives the issue of further delivery of
arms to Afghan counterrevolutionaries, was very clear: Pakistan's minister of foreign
affairs refused to answer this question, but has silence as well as the claim that
only issues relating to so-called humanitarian aid for the Afghan refugees were
allegedly discussed in Washington cannot mislead anyone. His claim that the United
States has allegedly reiterated its support for efforts aimed at seeking a political
solution for the situation around Afghanistan does not seem (?true) either. The reason
is that this claim is inconsistent with Washington's distinct method of action in this
connection.
Facts indicate that the present U.S. Government has not refrained from the policy of
arms assistance to the counterrevolutionary bands who are dispatched to Afghanistan.
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