MOSCOW, March 26 (RAPSI) – Deputy Head of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Law Konstantin Dobrynin has asked communications regulator Roskomnadzor to check compliance with the constitution of a ban on media reporting on the causes of cancer patients’ suicides, RIA Novosti reported on Thursday.

The request, which Dobrynin has sent to Roskomnadzor head Alexander Zharov, cites the fact that the Orthodoxy in the World website was ordered to delete information about the cause of suicides from an item on the death of cancer patients.

Dobrynin writes that the right to legally collect and distribute information is guaranteed in Russia under Article 29 of the Constitution, as well as by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.

“Information about the causes of cancer patients’ suicides is socially significant, because it is related to problems with exercising civil rights. Attempts to hush up this information could lead to more suicides,” Dobrynin writes in the request.

He believes that the ban on reporting suicide causes runs contrary to the right to information and prevents proper coverage of the shortage of medicines for cancer patients. Failure to act could result in more deaths, Dobrynin writes.