(Natural News) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is starting to control extra like his Russian nemesis by the day, as evidenced by his current signature on a brand new invoice that additional restricts press freedoms in his nation.
As conflict continues to rage following Russia’s invasion practically a 12 months in the past, Zelenskyy is doing nothing to show he’s worthy of the tens of billions of {dollars} actual democracies all through the West are throwing at him.
“The laws considerably will increase the powers of Ukraine’s state broadcasting regulator to permit it to control each the print and on-line information media,” Reclaim the Net reports. “Additional, it permits for fines to be imposed on media retailers, their licenses to be revoked with out due course of, and even some web sites to be briefly blocked with out going by the courts. Lastly, it offers the regulator authority to order search giants reminiscent of Google and different social media platforms to take away content material.”
Come to think about it, that sounds an terrible lot like our personal authorities, which pressed American social media firms to censor content material and ban customers all through Donald Trump’s administration, clearly with out his data and by no means to his benefit.
Reclaim the Internet notes additional:
Zelensky’s actions are already being criticized by press freedom advocates. As this invoice moved by Parliament, members of worldwide organizations such because the European Federation of Journalists and the Committee to Shield Journalists expressed their considerations about its provisions.
“The coercive regulation envisaged by the invoice and within the arms of a regulator completely managed by the federal government is worthy of the worst authoritarian regimes. It should be withdrawn. A state that may apply such provisions merely has no place within the European Union,” mentioned EFJ Basic Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez.
“Media regulation must be applied by a physique impartial of the federal government and its goal must be media independence, not media management,” Gutiérrez added.
“Ukraine’s media invoice severely imperils press freedom within the nation by tightening authorities management over info at a time when residents want it essentially the most,” Gulnoza Mentioned, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, added in an announcement, in accordance with Reclaim the Internet. “Ukrainian legislators ought to abandon the invoice, or at the least pause its progress in parliament till the European Union can weigh in with suggestions.”
The location added:
Members of Ukraine’s Nationwide Union of Journalists strongly opposed the invoice resulting from its potential to scale back elementary freedoms throughout the nation. However, Yevheniia Kravchuk, the deputy chairperson for Parliament’s Info Coverage Committee contradicted these worries by stating that Ukraine’s media laws had not been up to date for the reason that absence of the web 16 years prior. This new broader invoice was wanted to convey their media legal guidelines updated and supply larger entry to correct info and applied sciences.
In the meantime, earlier this 12 months, a Dutch journalist who had been covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine mentioned the Western media is routinely mendacity about what is definitely going down within the war-torn nation in an effort to keep up a “blame Moscow” narrative.
Sonja van den Ende, an impartial journalist from Rotterdam, Netherlands, mentioned the Western media “lie constantly about all the things simply to implement their very own agenda.”
Van den Ende is just not reporting from the consolation of a secure studio someplace in a Western capital, however relatively, she is on the bottom in Ukraine and has witnessed the invasion and its atrocities on either side for weeks, noting that at current, there are “solely a handful” of Western journalists within the hotspot of Donbas. As such, Western press retailers are merely “rubber-stamping faux information” simply as they did throughout the Iraq, Syria, and Afghan wars.
With Western press mendacity about what is occurring in Ukraine and Zelenskyy and his authorities transferring to silence the nation’s media, there must be no motive American taxpayers are pressured to proceed sending tax cash there. If they’ll’t make certain they’re being instructed the reality, then they shouldn’t should pay to be lied to.
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