The Council of Europe registered 13 alerts of infringement of journalists’ rights in Ukraine in the first nine months of 2016.
Patrick Penninckx, Head of Information Society Department, Directorate General of the Council of Europe for Human Rights and Rule of Law, announced this at the press conference entitled “Journalists’ safety in Ukraine. Stopping the impunity,” Ukrainian News Agency reports.
As of 2016, the Council of Europe’s platform to promote the protection of journalism and safety of journalists has recorded 218 breaches in 27 countries, 128 of them classified at Level 1, ‘Other acts having chilling effects on media freedom.’
Thirteen alerts came from Ukraine.
At the press conference they pointed to a positive trend in Ukraine concerning law-enforcement agencies’ response to the cases of infringement of journalists’ rights: the number of cases involving obstruction to professional journalist activity registered in 9M 2016 was greater than that for the whole year of 2015.
Meanwhile, the number of cases in which notice of suspicion was served is almost half as much as in 9M 2015.
In 9M, Mass Information Institute non-government organisation recorded one murder, 26 attacks, 79 cases of obstruction journalists’ activities, 33 cases of threat and intimidation and seven cases of censorship in Ukraine.
A new study of the Council of Europe, entitled “Journalists at Risk: part of the job?,” shows that 31% of journalists in the 47 Member-States faced violence, 46% intimidation with the use of force and 69% mental violence.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, Freedom House, an international non-government organisation, deems inadmissible attacks on mass media and journalists regardless of the editorial policy.
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