The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is monitoring the situation in Ukraine concerning the rights of journalists and working with Ukrainian authorities on issues related to journalists' safety, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir said in an interview with Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th November, 2019) The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is monitoring the situation in Ukraine concerning the rights of journalists and working with Ukrainian authorities on issues related to journalists' safety, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir said in an interview with Sputnik.
On Wednesday, Moscow hosted an international conference on media freedom and journalists' safety. The event was organized by the OSCE's Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media and Russia's Foreign Ministry. Last week, prior to the conference, Moscow expressed concern over the fact that Ukrainian armed forces continued to attack Russian reporters in Ukraine's eastern conflict zone of Donbas.
"Of course we also monitor the situation in Ukraine and I have been working a lot with the civil society and the journalists' association as well as with the authorities of the country on the different issues connected to the safety of the journalists or the pluralism of the media," Desir said.
Desir added that the OSCE had previously showed support for Kirill Vyshinsky, the executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya news Agency who spent more than a year in a prison in Ukraine over support of the country's breakaway regions. At the conference Vyshinsky personally thanked Desir for his involvement in his release.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had repeatedly said that Vyshinsky's arrest was politically motivated and yet another demonstration of how the former Ukrainian authorities' targeted journalists.
Vyshinsky was released from custody in August after spending more than 400 days in pre-trial detention, as the court repeatedly postponed the hearing of his case. He is far from being the only journalist who has been detained by Kiev for covering the Donbas conflict. Some have been accused of treason over their support for Donbas while others wanting to cover the situation have been banned from Ukraine. Such cases include both Ukrainian journalists, such as Igor Guzhva and Vasily Muravitsky, as well as foreign journalists, such as Marc Innaro of Italy.
Ukraine ranks 102nd out of 180 on the Reporters Without Borders 2019 World Press Freedom Index.
