VIENNA, December 11. /TASS/. Moscow has castigated Latvia’s case against Russian-language journalists on suspicion of violating the European Union’s sanctions as an infringement of freedom of the press and expression, Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said on Friday.
"We consider the incident to be a vivid example of a flagrant infringement on the fundamentals of democratic society, that is, freedom of the press and freedom of expression. We think it is absolutely unacceptable to say that the journalists of these media violated the European Union’s ‘sanction’ regime," he said at an online meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council.
He recalled that the EU restrictions target only MIA Rossiya Segodnya Director General Dmitry Kiselev personally and cannot be applied to all those who work for the media holding. Putting aside the legality of such "personal sanctions", it is categorically inadmissible to intimidate and persecute writers, columnists, stringers, photographers and public figures, he stressed. "As a matter of fact, they are freelance employees of the agency. They write and edit texts, select photos, in other words, they do their job and exercise the right to [freedom of] expression," the Russian diplomat noted.
According to Lukashevich, this is the third time this year when Russia is forced to bring up the issue of Latvia’s aggressive crusade to wipe out alternative sources of information from its media space. He recalled that Russia had already expressed concern over Riga’s economic pressure on Russian and Russian-language press outlets and over their discriminatory legislative initiatives geared against unwanted media.
"This time, we cannot ignore the blatant prosecution by the Latvian State Security Service (VDD) of employees of Sputnik Latvia, the Baltnews agency and a number of Russian-language journalists and public activists. On December 3, the Latvian intelligence services used the entire set of repressive measures: detentions, interrogations, searches and seizures of telephones, computers and storage devices with electronic data," the Russian diplomat noted.
Several Russian-speaking journalists were detained by the Latvian State Security Service (VDD) last week. Among them were journalist Andrei Yakovlev who was Baltnews.lv editor-in-chief for two years, journalists Andrei Solopenko and Alla Berezovskaya, who worked with this media outlet, as well as publicist, human rights activist and public figure Vladimir Linderman. Later, all of them were released under travel restrictions.
The VDD said back then that their actions against seven persons had been sanctioned by a court on suspicion of their violation of international sanctions. It said the journalists had been detained as part of a criminal case initiated back in January.