Truth is weapon that Kyiv regime dreads – Ukrainian journalist
Other journalists, including several people from the 1+1 TV Channel, had to resign because they felt they could not work under full censorship conditions. Junta functionaries have gone as far as ordering media people to report to the prosecutor’s office on a daily basis every case of “dubious statements” made in their shows. I have a scanned copy of this memo.
I myself, my wife and my 8 week-old son received numerous threats from the Right Sector and other ultra-rightist groups. So, I had to take my family out of Ukraine, while I myself had to move to a location not controlled by the Kyiv regime.
After I left, Ukrainian police came to my parents’ home, they searched the house looking for weapons – a totally false pretext, since I never possessed a weapon. Similar searches were carried out at my friends’ and colleagues’ homes.
Konstantin Dolgov, the editor of the “Glagol” web site, was held in jail for about a month, whereas Andrey Manchuk, like myself, escaped arrest only because he was on a business trip at the time, and the search was conducted in his absence.
Andrei Borodavka in Kharkov has been followed by the Euromaidan activists, so he has to hide. And there are dozens of similar cases.
Russian journalists are denied entry to Ukraine under various pretexts, also mostly false. Those Russian journalists who are already in Ukraine, are being followed and arrested under the accusations of spying and terrorism (it looks like the truth is really a dreaded weapon for the Kyiv regime).
Banning the truth, banning alternative opinions affects not only journalists, but politicians as well. Petr Simonenko, the leader of the Communist party of Ukraine, was beaten right in the Parliament for attempting to say the truth about what had happened in Odessa and Mariupol. After that the whole CPU faction was ousted from the Parliament. Now they want to ban both the communist party and the communist ideology in Ukraine. Is that what you call Freedom of Speech?
Not long before that ultra-right activists assaulted and beat Oleg Tsarev, an opposition MP. Later Tsarev’s house was burned down.
Two internet news outlets that are still publishing my analytical pieces, are editing my texts, trying to smooth them over and keep saying they are on the verge of shutting down.
As a result the media landscape in Ukraine is now presenting a single viewpoint, a single interpretation of events – the one, acceptable for the Kyiv junta. Every attempt to express a different stance is suppressed in the bud by every means possible, including mass killings, like the one in Odessa.
There is every reason to say that the Kyiv regime is a terrorist regime in every meaning of the word, because it remains in power only by means of terrorizing not journalists but the whole of its people.
Alexander Rogers is an independent Ukrainian journalist