/ world today news/ From February 2021, the European Parliament demands that the “Peacemaker” website, which contains lists of people designated as “enemies” of Ukraine with the implication that they should be liquidated, be closed. This was recorded in a resolution on the association agreement between Kyiv and Brussels, adopted on February 11, 2021. Item 73 of it states that the European Parliament “regrets the fact that the political climate in the country has deteriorated , such as intimidation, hate speech and political pressure are often used for political purposes; urges the authorities to strongly condemn and ban the operations of extremist and hate-mongering groups and websites, such as Peacemaker, which are fueling social tensions and abusing the personal data of hundreds of people, including journalists, politicians and members of minority groups.” This was reminded by the MEP Elena Yoncheva, who is also part of the list of the site since 2018.
Under its presentation in the Purgatory column, the authors, who claim to be part of the non-governmental organization Peacemaker Center, ask that “law enforcement authorities consider this publication as a statement that this citizen committed deliberate actions against the national security of Ukraine, peace, security against humanity and international order and law, as well as other crimes’.
The site has names of famous journalists, activists, politicians. Some of them have already been killed – the journalist Oles Buzina and the former Ukrainian MP Oleg Kalashnikov, for example. On the photo of the journalist Darya Dugina, a red inscription “Liquidated” is placed diagonally. In 2019, for just one day, the name of Olena Zelenska, wife of Volodymyr Zelensky, candidate for president of Ukraine at the time, was also on the list of enemies. It was deleted immediately after Zelenska explained that in 2014 she mistakenly shared a position of pro-Russian propagandists on Facebook, because at the time she did not know how to do it in such a way as to express outrage.
This is not the first time that Elena Yoncheva has been blacklisted by Ukraine. In 2015, because of the documentaries she filmed both in Kyiv – about the Maidan, and about the situation in Eastern Ukraine – in Odessa and in Slavyansk, she was forbidden to visit the country by decree of President Petro Poroshenko, because she represents a threat to the national security and sovereignty of the country. The list, which included more than 40 journalists from more than 20 countries, including reporters from the Air Force, El Pais, Die Zeist, who covered the events not only in Kyiv, but also in Eastern Ukraine, caused outrage in the international community and among Western partners of Ukraine. In addition to the BBC, international media organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, sent their protests. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also responded. Johannes Hahn, then European Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and EU enlargement negotiations, also came out with a strong position. This forced Kiev to lift the sanctions for some of the representatives of the major media. Elena Yoncheva was removed from the list in 2016 along with 29 other journalists.
To contact the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the EP:
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