Immunity to censure

Vitaliy Dudin, for the competition “Stop censure! Citizens for free states”

When shots are heard, the provision of human rights is always problematic. And the rights such as freedom of speech in our country are not considered rights at all. This is especially noticeable today, when perception only knows the difference between black and white.

Are Ukrainian mass media free? Their economical dependence on private owners seems critical. Oligarchs control up to 80% of the media market. Is there anything bad in this? I doubt that any national mass medium would even allow to begin a discussion on this topic.

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In Crimea Law-Enforcement Officers Are Pressuring Journalists’ Relatives

5 June 2014

Ruslan Yugosh, one of the founders of the portal “Sobytiya Kryma”, stated about attempts of pressure on him as a journalist by the Crimean police.

As he noted, they started pressuring him by calling his 73-year-old mother in for questioning:  “I can’t say that deep inside I wasn’t ready for attempts of “having influence” on me. But I never thought it would be by such an unnatural way. Having found that I don’t live in Crimea at the moment, police officers for some purpose decided to call in for questioning my 73-year-old mother – an elderly and ill person with hypertension. First they broke into the place where she lived and the next day they called her to witness at the far end of the city.  And there were no official documents for that,” he wrote on Facebook.

‘Censorship’ or Sanity? – Blocking Enemy Russian Agitprop on Ukrainian TV FAQ

Imagine if the Japanese had ‘merely’ surrounded Pearl Harbor in 1941, invaded with 30,000 soldiers, issued ultimatums to American troops, took over U.S. ships, beat up international journalists, bulled through a ‘referendum’ under military occupation and finally, annexed Hawaii… Can anyone seriously doubt these actions would likewise have been considered an act of war by FDR and the United States?

“KREMLIN SEWAGE”: RUSSIAN TV DISINFORMATION CHANNELS IN UKRAINE

In addition to armed military occupation and loss of territory, Ukraine has been deluged with Russian ‘news reports’, studio talk shows, blog and Youtube sites which knowingly present fake and untrue stories. There are three target groups for Russian disinformation: their own citizens, low-information Ukrainians, and the uninformed world opinion. Their unprecedented feverish rhetoric continues to openly advocate a breakup of the Ukrainian state and stokes widespread paranoia.

Belarusian journalist on the sadists who seized Crimea

Dmitriy Galko met Ukrainians who were kidnapped in Crimea.  He spoke about their meeting in his blog:

From the very beginning, I did not like someone’s light hand in bringing into use the phrase “polite people” when referring to the invaders of Crimea.  I think it could be a part of the informational war, which works to voice Putin’s assertion that there can be no intervention if no shot has been fired and that, therefore, there was no intervention in Crimean, but rather something like an operation to restore order.

One who is familiar with the history may recall such interventions, for example, when Hitler took Sudetenland. However, I do want to talk not about the historical analogies but the false image of the “polite” occupier.  It took me one meeting in a Kherson hospital with guys who were kept captive in Crimea for nearly two weeks for that image to crumble into dust. Their names are Andrij Schekun and Yuri Shevchenko. The only thing that unites them is the Crimean captivity hell that they experienced. Before, they did not know each other.

Wage a media-war in Russian!

By Robert van Voren

Since the crisis in Ukraine took the shape of a fundamental conflict between a growing part of the Ukrainian people and a government of “crooks and swindlers” that, as it later turned out, managed to rob the nation of an approximate 70 billion euro, Russian friends have asked me with increasing urgency for independent media sources to help them follow the events. Initially, when it was not yet clear in what way the standoff would end and the atmosphere at Maidan was still quite joyful, the requests were mainly the result of curiosity, rather than a urgent need to know what was actually happening on the ground. Russian media downplayed the size of the demonstrations, referring to “several thousand” of them, while in fact some 800,000 demonstrators filled Independence Square and all the surrounding streets and alleys. It resulted in jokes in the social media, e.g. a photo of the massive demonstrations with the text: “Special for Russian TV: we are not here.” 

In Luhansk pro-Russian mob seizes broadcasting station

According to journalists in Luhansk, a crowd of people knocked down the entry door of the IRTA broadcasting company, occupied all the offices, took out the fire extinguishers and are threatening to burn down the company building if employees do not turn over and destroy raw footage about the seizure of the Luhansk Oblast Administration building on Sunday.

Additionally the rioters are attempting to interrupt the TV broadcasting channel and force it to go off the air. Several journalists and the management of IRTA are trapped in the building.

Simferopol protests against Ukrainian TV Channels being banned

A few dozens of Simferopol citizens on March 10, disregarding bad weather and provocations of pro-russian activists, have marched against repression of free speech, to restore broadcasting of Ukrainian TV Channels, and in support of the Crimean Tatar TV Channel ATR.

Kyiv University offers post to fired Russian historian

The Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv has offered a position to Andrey Zubov, the Russian professor who had been fired for criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kyiv National University announced on its Facebook page on March 4.

“On behalf of the University Administration, we are issuing an invitation to Professor Andrey Zubov, professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), for the position of professor at the Institute of International Relations (at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) — a partner of MGIMO. We look forward to seeing in our ranks this outstanding historian and scholar and honest human being,” the Kyiv University announcement states.