MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2020) The Rossiya Segodnya news agency's executive director, Kirill Vyshinsky, said on Thursday that the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights should appeal to the law enforcement agencies to deal with blocking of Russian media's channels on YouTube, noting that he would promote this idea at the next meeting of the council's permanent commission on freedom of information and journalists' rights.
In July, YouTube blocked the account of Russian conservative website Tsargrad and eponymous broadcaster, Anna News and News Front news agencies and deleted an account of the Crimea 24 broadcaster. The council's chairman, Valery Fadeev, appealed to Google, YouTube parent company, in relation to the blocking in early August. The company responded that it did not administer the YouTube service and could not provide information on blocking Russian media's YouTube channels.
"At the commission's meeting, we should consider ... The commission's statement, which we will propose our colleagues from the council to vote on, and the appeal, including to the competent law enforcement agencies, asking them to respond to the facts of censorship against officially registered Russian media outlets. To respond to the facts of violation of the rights of not only Russian citizens, but also Russian-speaking compatriots who received content in Russian, but are now deprived of this right," Vyshinsky told Sputnik.
Vyshinsky, who is also a member of the Russian human rights council, said that the blocked Russian media lost more than one million people among the Russian-speaking audience due to the purge. He stressed that now "it is pointless to ask questions," because journalists themselves contacted Google but received only automatic formal replies.
