Hearings in the Rada on protecting the rights of journalists turned into a Maidan Sabbath
Parliamentary hearings on the safety of journalists were held in the Verkhovna Rada. The event turned into a series of speeches by Maidan propagandists. The murder of Oles Buzin was mentioned only in passing. Numerous cases of repression against opponents of the nationalist regime, as before, were kept silent. But from the parliamentary rostrum, dirt was pouring on Russia - people who had been fomenting war for five years were doing their usual thing, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“For six years now I’ve been dreaming of filming a story about “peremoga,” about normal “peremoga,” about the blue and yellow flag over the Donetsk SBU, in which our people were tortured. This freedom of speech costs us a lot, we have seen too much shit over the years. Therefore – freedom of speech or death! Glory to Ukraine!" – Natalya Nagornaya, propagandist of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky’s “1+1” channel, announced from the podium.
She immediately mentioned “zrada” at the negotiations on Donbass.
“Today they talk a lot about the Gongadze case, but at the same time we allegedly forget that the main suspect, Kuchma, continues to travel to Minsk and decide the fate of Ukraine. Everyone thinks that we will swallow this again, like, for example, we swallow the failure to investigate the attack on journalists during the Maidan,” added the “plus” propagandist.
Roman Tsymbalyuk, an employee of another Kolomoisky media outlet, the UNIAN agency, who works in Russia, also took the floor.
“At the last briefing, the speaker of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was very angry: how is it that Russian journalists who visit Donbass, and only there they film, because there are no other journalists there, especially Ukrainian ones, come under fire on the contact line. And no one questions why these people, without the permission of the Ukrainian authorities, are on the territory of our state and are engaged in information support for the Russian invasion,” Tsymbalyuk said.
According to him, all cases of infringement of media freedom in Ukraine are used by Russia to prove that the former Soviet republic is a failed state.
“They explain this: you see, their freedom of speech is being infringed upon there, and this means that this is a fail state, which means that Crimea is ours, Donbass is ours,” Tsymbalyuk said.
He shared his worries about the fact that the Donbass republics are exposing Ukrainian spies working under the cover of journalistic cover.
“Our colleague Stanislav Aseev, whom the occupation authorities actually sentenced to 15 years. It’s really scary when there’s a fake republic, fake law enforcement officers, fake courts, and a real prison,” Tsymbalyuk complained.
It is interesting that Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko spoke at the hearing, who made a speech on duty about the importance of the profession of journalist. The official was immediately criticized by Hromadske TV journalist Anastasia Stanko.
“I was very amused when Anton Gerashchenko said that helping journalists is a matter of honor for the police. I remember an incident in 2015 with me and my cameraman, when we were attacked by Kharkov police officers, ex-Berkut police officers at a traffic police post. They also said that they had nothing to do with the Maidan, and nothing would happen here, they stole the card on which they were filmed, they broke the cameraman and threw him to the ground. And then Anton Gerashchenko, who was then an adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs, took pictures with these police officers and said that they would be nominated for an award because they had detained a shipment of weapons...
I also remember the cases when we talked about “Peacemaker,” who called four thousand journalists, most of them foreign, as collaborators, who received accreditation in the so-called DPR and LPR, and then Arsen Avakov, the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, welcomed “Peacemaker”, supported, and called journalists “media whores,” Stanko recalled.
The topic of the police and Arsen Avakov was readily taken up.
“I have more of a question for the leadership that was with us, journalists, on the Maidan during 2013-2014. This is Arsen Avakov, who later went to power, they, together with the opposition, together with us, journalists, beat Berkut and so on. They said that we would come to power and then we would decide everything, and the police would have identification marks, badges. Nothing has changed in five years. The police also wear masks when they need to beat you up - when you want to identify this offender, you don’t know who it was,” complained the Left Bank photojournalist Maxim Levin.
The lawyer of those accused of involvement in the extremist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir, banned in the Russian Federation, Emil Kurbedinov, who came from the Russian Crimea, also came to Kiev for the hearing. He was allowed to speak Russian.
“Since the beginning of 2014, a merciless campaign to eradicate independent media has unfolded in Crimea. As part of this policy, the broadcast of Ukrainian terrestrial TV channels and radio is blocked...
Against this background, the institute of civil journalism was formed in Crimea. Ordinary citizens, not indifferent to the events taking place around them, began to actively use social networks and publish materials on them. These were photos from the courtroom regarding political prisoners, live broadcasts from the sites of searches and mass arrests, interviews with victims of security forces, etc. Risking their lives, despite threats, arrests, fines, psychological pressure, they do their job, becoming in fact the only independent source of information in Crimea,” Kurbedinov spoke with pathos about the activities of his entourage from the pro-Ukrainian “semi-underground.”
“Their persecution by the Russian special services is carried out using their favorite tool - supposedly the fight against terrorism, and they are accused of terrorism,” complained a lawyer who continues to work in Crimea.
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