Wednesday 6 May 2015

Death threats against veteran RT journalist

RT’s Paula Slier leaves Ukraine following call for her arrest, death threats


RT correspondent Paula Slier. Photo from facebook.com/paula.slier

5 May, 2015

RT correspondent Paula Slier, who covered the fire near the Chernobyl nuclear station, has left Ukraine after a local journalist urged security services to detain her. Some commentators were calling for the RT reporter’s death.

The public call to arrest Slier was posted on Facebook by Denis Kazansky, a blogger and journalist for Ukrainsky Tizhden (Ukrainian Week) magazine.
The worker of the Kremlin propaganda channel Russia Today [RT] Paula Slier, who laughingly reported on self-defense forces burning Ukrainian soldiers alive with ‘Grad’ missiles, moves freely about the country,” he wrote.

Sirs from Ukraine’s Security Council, it’s your mistake. Maybe even Graham Philips could arrive? Those rascals shouldn’t be in our country,” Kazansky dded.

The Facebook allegations triggered a flood of angry comments, with some users calling for the murder of the RT correspondent.

Thank you to everyone who alerted me about the threats - after being made aware of them I left Kiev and am now out of Ukraine

A number of Ukrainian media outlets also reported on the Facebook entry.
Another Ukrainian journalist, Anatoly Shary, posted a YouTube video accusing Kazansky of lies and fact-spinning, attempting to prove that the accusations against Slier are a sham initiated by Ukrainian journalists.

It is not the first time Slier has faced online death threats. She received them in September 2014, when she was reporting from the frontline in eastern Ukraine. It was then that she was accused of “smiling,” while reporting next to the Donbass rebels firing Grad missiles at the alleged positions of the Kiev troops.


But as you can see from the video, Paula is actually wincing from the loud noise of rockets being launched close by.




Having worked in war zones before, Paula is no stranger to life-threatening situations, but she says with a targeted campaign like this it is different: "I am used to working in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq but it's a different kind of fear - you risk for example being in the wrong place at the wrong time and facing kidnappings, bombings and the like; but here it’s being afraid that someone will recognize you amid a conscious effort to catch and hurt you."

In the face of the multiple threats, RT head Margarita Simonyan is calling on the Ukrainian government to provide safety for media workers:

The threats made against Paula have once again demonstrated that Ukraine does not have proper working conditions for journalists, even when they cover important stories such as the Chernobyl fire, and other issues entirely unrelated to politics. We are extremely alarmed by the fact that reporters have to fear for their lives, and we call upon the government of Ukraine to ensure a safe environment for the press.”

The Russian Investigative Committee has started a criminal probe against Ukrainian political scientist Yury Romanenko, who advocated the killing of Russian journalists at his Harvard lecture about a month ago, and later posted the speech on Facebook.

Paula Slier has worked for RT since the channel was founded in 2005, and is a military correspondent who’s covered numerous conflicts: in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Israel and Ukraine.

In 2013, Slier was declared one of the most influential South Africans in the world.

Ukrainian political analyst: Snipers must kill journalists from Russia

6 April, 2015

Yuri Romanenko expressed his aggressive thoughts during a discussion at Harvard, but his US partners did not support him

Fairly well-known Ukrainian journalist and political analyst Yuri Romanenko, head of the “Stratagem” Center for Political Analysis suggested to the Armed Forces of Ukraine to enhance the country’s defenses by killing Russian journalists, Russian LifeNews tv reported. The Ukrainian expert offers UAF snipers to be ordered to suppress coverage of the situation in the Donbass by people in helmets marked PRESS.

Yuri Romanenko. Definitely not a cosmonaut.
Yuri Romanenko. Definitely not a cosmonaut.

Romanenko posted on his Facebook page an account of how he and his teammates traveled to the United States and met with American experts and human rights activists. Americans probably did not object to the discussion on the topic of “Russian aggression”, but, as Romanenko writes, were shocked by his radical proposal to combat Russian media by creative sniping, something allegedly implemented in Kiev a year ago.

I know how to solve the problem of waning attention and bring the media to the next level. UAF must selectively and carefully destroy Russian journalists covering the situation in Donbass. You need to direct the UAF snipers to shoot people wearing helmets inscribed with “Press” as priority targets. Since the media represent a destructive weapon and allow Russia to operate not only in the war zone, but also on the territory of Ukraine, taking out several dozen journalists in the conflict zone will help reduce the quality of the picture in the Russian media, and, therefore, reduce the effectiveness of their propaganda, Yuri Romanenko wrote.

romanenkoo

The political scientist admits that the murder of journalists is “bad PR” for Ukraine, but it does not matter, because this would “relatively easily bring the topic to the top of American news,” Romanenko bluntly told the American experts about this.

All the same, this is PR, and all we need is not fall out of the focus of your media in the context of your presidential election campaign,” he quotes his words at a meeting at Harvard.

His US interlocutors said that murder of journalists violates international law and the world community will not allow the Ukrainian radicals to commit such crimes. At this point, according to Yuri Romanenko, the Ukrainian delegation “grinned happily,” and “one man from the Diaspora” said in his ear: “Don’t listen to this, you are completely right, this is exactly how we should be saving the Ukraine.”







Flowers in memory of the VGRTK journalists killed in Ukraine -- correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and video engineer Anton Voloshin -- by the VGRTK building in Moscow. (RIA Novosti/Alexey Kudenko)

A criminal case has been opened against Ukrainian political scientist Yuriy Romanenko who allegedly called for killing Russian journalists, RIA Novosti reports Tuesday citing official spokesman of Russia's Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin.

According to Markin, at a conference at Harvard (Cambridge, Massachusets) in early April, Romanenko publicly claimed that “the armed forces of Ukraine must selectively and thoroughly destroy Russian journalists who cover the situation in southeastern Ukraine.”

Later, on April 5, Romanenko posted the speech on his Facebook page under the title “How we discussed Ukraine at Harvard.” His speech was also published in the media.

Investigators say that the statement contains violent elements such as calls to Ukrainian troops to kill the Russian journalists working there.

Romanenko’s statements also incite hatred toward Russian journalists as a social group, according to Markin

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