The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) condemns a case of pressure against journalist Olena Kozubovska (Олена Ігорівна Козубовська ) and camera operator Serhiy Ovcharyshyn (Сергій Овчаришин ) from the local online media outlet, NikVesti (НикВести) (https://nikvesti.com/), during a council session by several members of the city council..
All happened on 5 September, 2023 in Yuzhnoukrainsk (Южноукраїнськ), a town in southern Ukraine,
A video uploaded to YouTube by NikVesti captured the scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKq0RjqCFIs), where a council member, demanded that the journalists vacate the room where the session was taking place. Additional the council member contended that the session was closed to the public and claimed to have personally rented the room, insisting that the journalists pay to remain and that the journalists alleged lacked proper accreditation. She called the police for assistance.
Upon their arrival, the police found no wrongdoing on the part of the journalists and declined to remove them. Consequently, NikVesti’s correspondents were eventually permitted to report on the council session.
Representatives from the Kyiv-based Institute of Mass Information (IMI) contacted the main office of the National Police in Mykolaiv oblast, who confirmed that the incident had taken place, but the deputy refused to file a statement against the journalists in the end. IMI informed the public in April this year that Olena Kozubovska suffered injuries to her hands and was trapped under the rubble after a Russian Kalibr missile from Black sea hit the five-story building in downtown Mykolaiv where she was living and destroying it.
Additional, on 6 September 2023, a cyber attack was carried out against IMI.
South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) is a regional non-governmental, non-profit network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in Southeast, South, East and Central Europe. SEEMO members are in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova (with the territory of Transdnestria), Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Türkiye / Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Austria, Italy, Vatican and San Marino have a special status in SEEMO. SEEMO has over 3000 individual members, and additional media as corporate members.
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