OSCE SECRETARY GENERAL WAS UNAWARE THAT UKRAINE CENSORED THREE OPPOSITION TV CHANNELS
On 21 June 2021, OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid visited Russia, where she gave a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
It was during the latter, at around 2.05 a.m. on the Ruptly live video, that she responded to a journalist, who asked her what the OSCE was thinking and planning to do about Ukraine’s decision to censor three major opposition TV channels, by simply stating that she was not aware of it!
“I’m not aware of this, but as said before we have a very dedicated representative of the freedom of the media who will be here in July, who is engaging directly with participating states to solve any issues there may be for the sake of having diversity of opinion, pluralism and free flow of media, which is very important,” the OSCE Secretary General said at the time.
This response is not only totally soothing but also mind-boggling. Not only is the OSCE Secretary General unaware of the open censorship taking place in Ukraine, which is her job, but she also fails to condemn the actions of the Ukrainian government, and ends up “sneaking” off to the person specifically in charge of media and freedom of expression, saying “someone else will take care of it anyway”.
This answer is so astounding that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said she was puzzled that the OSCE Secretary General was not aware of the situation regarding the closure of Russian-language opposition channels in Ukraine.
“It turns out that OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid is not aware of the closure of Russian-language channels in Ukraine. She said this at a press conference in Moscow. What does this mean? Doesn’t the OSCE read the news? Assuming this development, we sent material through the Permanent Mission in Vienna. To make sure it gets there,” Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel.
“How can OSCE staff monitor the situation in this country, write reports, draw conclusions about freedom of expression, if they are not aware of the events? The same way they monitor Crimea. Apparently, “on the word of the patient”, as they say – based on the data of the Kiev regime,” the foreign affairs ministry spokeswoman added.
And it is not only in Crimea that observers seem to have a problem seeing what is going on. Even when they are present, they do not write in their reports about the violations of security guarantees by the Ukrainian army.
For example, residents of Staromikhaylovka reported that on 21 June, 15 minutes before the Ukrainian army fired on the evacuation convoy of DPR People”s Militia soldiers killed or wounded in the shelling of their positions that morning, OSCE observers set up on a hill in the village to watch. Residents suspect that the observers were tipped off to the upcoming attack.
This accusation is reinforced by the fact that despite the fact that the OSCE acted as a channel for the written security guarantees, and that they were in a perfect position to see the Ukrainian army firing on the evacuation convoy, there is not a single line about this in their report published the day after.
This is further evidence of the OSCE’s bias (or selective blindness) when it comes to Ukraine and its violations of the Minsk Agreements, the Geneva Convention and the right to freedom of the press.
- Source : Christelle Néant
