You're reading: OSCE official suggests finding fine line between free speech, countering Russian propaganda

The Ukrainian government needs to find a “fine line” that would allow it to both protect free speech and fight Kremlin propaganda, a top official of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe said in an interview with the Kyiv Post.

There has been a debate in Ukraine on whether pro-Kremlin media, which are inciting Russia’s war against Ukraine and fabricating lies, should be banned. While some argue that they are a threat to national security, others condemn such measures as an attack on free speech.

“The Ukrainian government needs to find a very fine line with the help of the international community on how to tackle these issues,” said Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE’s representative on freedom of the media.

Russian propaganda

She said that banning television channels was in general “not an option that any democracy should seek.” Ukraine’s National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council, the Interior Ministry and courts banned at least 15 Russian television channels, though some providers have bypassed the restrictions.

According to international law, there are certain television programs that can be banned if there is a threat to national security, given that proper legal procedures are complied with, Mijatovic said.

She added that such decisions should be made by courts. “I’m totally against any quasi-judicial body or agency, not to mention government, being engaged in this,” she said.

She said, however, that “propaganda is not free speech…Propaganda is an evil that can create huge problems in society. It needs to be fought with truth.”

Mijatovic, who comes from Bosnia and Herzegovina and used to head the country’s media regulator, drew parallels between Kremlin propaganda and that of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s regime during the Yugoslav Wars in 1991-1999.

“I come from a region where propaganda played an enormous role,” she said. “It was used as a tool to manipulate people, to inject them with hatred. Propaganda created division, and people lived in fear.”

Mijatovic said that the false story about a boy crucified by Ukrainian troops in the city of Slovyansk, broadcast by Russia’s Channel One in July 2014, reminded her of similar lies on Serbian television under Milosevic.

“When I heard this story about the boy who was crucified, I recalled the story on state-controlled television I heard back in 1992, when I was in Sarajevo (the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina),” she said. “They were saying that babies of certain ethnic origin are baked in an oven. No proof (was presented). Another story was that Serbs were thrown to lions in the zoo in order to feed animals.”

Mijatovic’s visit to Crimea during its annexation by Russia in March 2014, when she and her team were detained by pro-Kremlin self-defense units, evoked similar associations.

“We landed in Simferopol, and the first thing I told my colleagues was ‘Sarajevo revisited’,” she said. “I felt it there. I saw the way people were looking at us. I could see fear and tension.”

Counter-propaganda

Despite the dangers of Kremlin propaganda, Mijatovic said that she was against Ukraine engaging in counter-propaganda.

She said she had criticized the creation of the Information Policy Ministry in December. The ministry has been ridiculed and criticized by many journalists as a potential tool of censorship and propaganda, with some dubbing it “the Ministry of Truth” – a term from George Orwell’s dystopia “1984.” It has also come up with some controversial initiatives like the creation of an “Internet army” of pro-Ukrainian bloggers.

“When I hear “minister of information,” it rings a very wrong bell,” Mijatovic said. “It’s not an institution that belongs to democracy.’ She added that she was meeting with Information Policy Minister Yury Stets on March 17 and had a lot of questions for him.

Improvements in media landscape

Though she had found the ministry’s creation questionable, Mijatovic said that she had cooperated closely with Ukrainian authorities since the EuroMaidan Revolution and that she saw a political will in the country to protect free speech.

“One of the greatest achievements of EuroMaidan is the freedom of speech and freedom of the media,” she said. “And this is something that needs to be preserved.”

This contrasts with the rule of former President Viktor Yanukovych in 2010-2014.

“Free speech did not exist under Yanukovych,” she said. “But saying that there was less free speech under Yanukovych doesn’t mean that everything now is perfect. There were many expectations. Some were fulfilled, but not all.”

Attacks on journalists

One of the major issues that Ukraine needs to address now is the impunity of those responsible for attacks on journalists.

“Every attack should be investigated, and all perpetrators and masterminds should be put before justice,” she said.

Specifically, she mentioned the murder of Vyacheslav Veremiy, a journalist at the Vesti newspaper, during the EuroMaidan Revolution in February 2014. In November 2014 Anton Gerashchenko, a member of parliament, said that the criminal case against one of the suspected murderers – a pro-Yanukovych thug supposedly hired by former Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko – had been submitted to a court, and seven others were wanted.

“Part of the investigation was done behind closed doors and there is still no end of this case,” Mijatovic said.

Another landmark case is that of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000. “(It’s important to) find the masterminds of Gongadze’s murder,” she said. “It’s still a very negative mark on Ukraine. It’s something that marked the country forever because of the brutality of the murder.”

Four Interior Ministry employees, including former police Lt. Gen. Oleksiy Pukach, were sentenced to prison terms for the murder but the organizers have not been found so far. Allegations that former President Leonid Kuchma was behind the murder led to large-scale protests in 2000-2001.

Influence of tycoons and public broadcasting

The influence of oligarchs – a common name for tycoons who have ties to the political establishment – on the media is also a problem. Mijatovic said that it was a defect that Ukraine shared with Western countries, where the media empires of Australian American businessman Rupert Murdoch and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have become targets of criticism.

“They have a devastating effect on true, genuine journalism,” she said.

To avoid the bias and spin often characteristic of both state-controlled media and those influenced by oligarchs, Mijatovic called for creating an independent public service broadcaster similar to BBC. She praised the Ukrainian bill on introducing such a broadcaster, which will be considered by parliament on March 19, and is cooperating with Ukrainian authorities on the issue.

Though the broadcaster will be established by the Verkhovna Rada, the state should “get out” of its editorial policy, she said.

Crackdown on media in Crimea and Donbas

Mijatovic also commented on what she described as “a witch hunt against journalists and bloggers” in separatist-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine and Russian-controlled Crimea.

“(Separatist) de facto authorities are not very media friendly,” she said, adding that it had become almost impossible for Ukrainian media to work in areas under their control, and many journalists had been detained there.

Meanwhile, Russian-annexed Crimea has banned Ukrainian television channels, newspapers and magazines on the peninsula and cracked down on ATR, the largest Crimean Tatar channel.

However, it is hard to do anything about it partially because the OSCE media freedom representative does not have a mandate to negotiate with the illegitimate authorities of Crimea and Kremlin-backed separatists in Donbas.

“We are living in some kind of vicious circle when it comes to international diplomacy,” Mijatovic said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].