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Human Rights in Ukraine Information website of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group |
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The President’s latest draft law proposing a “counterintelligence unit for protecting the interests of the State in the sphere of information security” is dangerously similar to practice already seen among Ukraine’s post-Soviet neighbours, most notoriously, Belarus 
While attending the Ukrainian Journalists’ March against Impunity, Vasyl Demyaniv, Editor of the Kolomiya Herald, informed that the case involving the attack on him, which he links to his professional activities, has been sent back to the court for re-examination 
The Pechersky District Court in Kyiv has adjourned hearings into the case against former MIA General Oleksy Pukach who is charged in connection with the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze in September 2000 
The court has found that Kherson businessman, Viktor Shevchuk did indeed inflict grievous assault on Dementiy Bily, journalist and human rights activist, during the Mayor’s report on his activities to the selected few in September 2010. 
On the first International Day against Impunity, ARTICLE 19 called on the authorities of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia to adopt all necessary political and legal measures to protect journalists and defend the right to freedom of expression, in accordance with their international obligations 
On International Day against Impunity, Ukrainian journalists will be reminding the authorities of crimes against journalists which remained unsolved and therefore unpunished. 
The channel’s General Director reports that over the last 10 days there have been two attacks on the channel’s journalists, and said that the police response had been extremely passive, with no criminal investigation launched 
"If it is passed it will not promote the safeguarding of freedom of speech in Ukraine. The unclear and abstract legislative definitions in the morality sphere will create the preconditions for the return in Ukraine of censorship and possibility of pressure on the media" 
The Kyiv Police justified their call for a ban jnot only on the “high likelihood of confrontation” between different organizations, but also conflict between those gathered and police units “which could lead to a sharp escalation of the political situation”. 
Tolerance cannot be expected when the State-owned television channel distorts or conceals information of vital importance and even the Head of the European Commission in Ukraine is stopped from explaining their position to Ukrainian viewers 
In his article “Viktor Yanukovych’s Press Pool – at the Taxpayers’ Expense”, Serhiy Leshchenko reports that President Yanukovych is accompanied on his travels by representatives of the same - loyal - TV channels and publications 
The appeal against the ban on a picket outside the President’s reportedly sumptuous residence Mezhyhirya on 6 June 2011 was rejected without the claimant being informed of the hearing at all. The peaceful picket had been planned to remind the President of his promise made a year earlier to show the residence to journalists 
In a Gallup survey assessing how people in particular countries view the situation with freedom of speech, 39% of Ukrainian respondents believed that journalists in their country do not have a lot of freedom, while only 43% regard the media in Ukraine as free 
It is convinced that the rules and sanctions in the draft law which, incidentally, has no equivalent in any European country, go against the practice of law creation in democratic countries and could lead to cases of censorship in the Ukrainian media 
The police have detained two men suspected of carrying out the attack on Mykolaiv journalist, Oleksandr Vlashchenko in which the journalist was shot in the head 
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