The initiative to set up a ministry of information policy in Ukraine endangers freedom of speech, says Dunja Mijatovic, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media.
“The Ukraine initiative to create a ministry of information a clear threat to media freedom, this is not the way to counter propaganda,” she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, Dec. 3.
The OSCE representative promised to discuss the matter with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin at a meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Basel on Dec. 4.
“Will discuss Ukraine step to create ministry of information with FM PavloKlimkin tomorrow at OSCEMC14 this is a threat to media freedom,” Mijatovic tweeted.
Earlier she posted a link to an article entitled “Ukraine just created its own version of Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ on her microblog.”
On Dec. 2, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada backed the list of candidate ministers proposed by the parliamentary coalition. The parliament has approved the candidacy of Yuriy Stets of Petro Poroshenko Bloc as the head of the re-created ministry of information policy. A number of parliamentarians, who are former journalists, did not vote as they opposed the creation of the new government department.
