You're reading: Gerashchenko wants criminal proceedings against Myrotvorets website dropped

KYIV - A Ukrainian MP, member of People's Front faction, advisor to the Interior Minister, Anton Gerashchenko, appealed the Prosecutor General's Office (GPO), Interior Ministry and State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), asking them to check the legitimacy of opening criminal proceedings into obstruction of the lawful professional activities of journalists after Myrotvorets (Peacemaker) website posted personal data [of Ukraine and international journalists] on its website last week.

“I asked the prosecutor general, interior minister and the head of the Security Service to close the criminal case opened against volunteers at the site. Contact details – not personal data – for journalists accredited in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) were revealed. This is not a crime. Volunteers of the Peacemaker project did not violate the Constitution and laws of Ukraine, ” Gerashchenko wrote on his Facebook page on May 16.

According to the MP, volunteers of the project, as well as every [Ukraine] citizen and journalist, have the right to distribute any information that is not prohibited by law, including information obtained as a result of the hacking attack on a database of the terrorist organization DPR.

Gerashchenko attached a photocopy to his post of his appeal to Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and SBU Chief Vasyl Hrytsak.

The note says: “… I ask you … to check the legitimacy of the decision made by the authorized person of the Kyiv prosecutor’s office that posting information about a criminal offense committed under Part 1, Article 171 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine into the unified register of pre-trial investigations. Some actions [undertaken by law-enforcement agencies] may be regarded as a criminal offense, and there are questions about the accuracy of the preliminary legal qualification of the criminal offense.”

The Peacemaker website published files with lists of more than 4,000 journalists who have been accredited in the self-proclaimed DPR and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR). The list includes the names of Ukrainian and foreign journalists, their mobile contacts and the period of their assignment in areas occupied by Kremlin-led fighters in eastern Ukraine.

On May 11 the Kyiv city prosecutor’s office entered into the unified register of pre-trial investigations information about a criminal offense under Part 1, Article 171 of the Criminal Code (obstruction of the lawful professional activities of journalists).

On May 13 staff members of the Peacemaker center announced their decision to close down their eponymous website, saying they would provide open access to all the information gathered by the media collective.