MEPs voice "serious concern" over government crackdown on press freedom in Ukraine

by Martin Banks

At the summit in Vilnius on 28-29 November, Kiev hopes to sign a wide-ranging Association Agreement with the EU.

But a debate in the European Parliament heard that recent government-led steps to stifle press freedom in Ukraine suggest that EU policymakers should think twice before signing off the deal in the Lithuanian capital next week.

The seminar on press freedom on Wednesday was organised in the European Parliament by the Brussels based Foundation for Democracy and Governance.

A director of the Foundation said, “It is important that we look beyond the results of the Vilnius summit, and ensure that there is full freedom of the press; this is a cornerstone of democracy and a fundamental right.

“Looking ahead to next year´s presidential election campaign, it is important that the electorate have good, reliable and objective sources of information and news to help them to make informed choices."

Hosted by Italian EPP MEP Fabrizio Bertot, the meeting in Strasbourg heard how the regional Odessa-based TV station ATV had recently been closed down by the Ukrainian government.

On November 13 the Odessa Court of appeal revoked both licenses held by ATV, a regional TV station based in Odessa, whose owner Igor Markov had recently been stripped of his status as a member of Ukraine s Verkhovna Rada (parliament).

Following this, some 160 individuals were summoned by the police in Odessa for questioning, four persons have been arrested and the director general of the station has been detained in custody. Thirty journalists and technicians now fear that they will lose their jobs.

“This is selective justice,” Nataliya Perevalova Editor in Chief of ATV, told the meeting.

“It is the use of the criminal code to imprison our general girector seize our equipment, interrogate journalists who work for the company and effectively close us down. Decisions and actions have been made so fast that the company's administration has not even received the full text of the judgment and cannot appeal.”

The reasons for the targeting of the ATV station are unclear but informed sources believe that it is related to the editorial policy of the station to broadcast economic content supporting a Russian backed campaign for Ukraine to join the Customs Union.

The actions also followed an announcement by Igor Markov that he held presidential ambitions. But regardless of the motivation for the closure, the action follows a trend of the use of criminal sanctions to allegedly harass and terrorise the media into submission.

Denis MacShane, a former BBC journalist and former President of the National Union of Journalists in the UK, spoke of the "notorious" case of Georgiy Gongadze, who paid the ultimate price when he was brutally murdered in 2009, and whose murderer was only brought to trial and sentenced earlier this year.

However, the trial was behind closed doors and the full details of the case have not yet been brought into the open.

Moreover, in order to obfuscate the content of the internet portal Ukrainska Pravda which was founded by Gongadze, the authorities have, said MacShane, created a clone website that mimics the original for the purposes of “black PR” to muddy the waters.

“The bottom line is that Ukrainian people do not have free access to free and fair objective news coverage,” he said.

Other participants at the conference referred to a general lack of transparency in political life in Ukraine, and a lack of respect for the press.

One commentator suggested that the European Parliament should do more to encourage journalists from the Eastern Partnership countries to visit Brussels for fact finding and training visits.

Journalists from these countries, it was said, should be encouraged to reach out to their colleagues in the Brussels press corps and develop their international networks.

Closing the conference, Bertot said that he was "very concerned" with the issue of the freedom of speech.

He proposed that the ATV station should invite a group of MEPs to visit Odessa for a fact-finding visit, during which they could be interviewed by the local station.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian parliament has for the second time rejected a proposal that would have allowed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko to seek medical treatment abroad.

The case of Tymoshenko, currently in jail, has been cited as an obstacle to the planned signing of the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU.

Speaking after the decision on Thursday, Hannes Swoboda, president of the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament, said, "At this time, one week before the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, the future of EU-Ukraine relations remains very unclear.

"The individual case of Yulia Tymoshenko should not be allowed to jeopardise the far-reaching negotiations and potential improvements for the people of Ukraine. But today's parliamentary decision raises profound doubts about how serious the Ukraine's commitment to the EU really is," said the Austrian deputy.

"We deplore the pressure and blackmailing tactics that Russia has used against Ukraine, and other countries. It is equally deplorable that Ukraine seems to have given in to this pressure and appears to have chosen to diverge from its European path."