Number of "quarantine" violations of freedom of speech gets increasing - IMI

21 violations of freedom of expression related to lockdown have been recorded by the Institute of Mass Information since March 12, 2020 (since the beginning of the quarantine in Ukraine).

During last 10 days, IMI has recorded three cases of these violations: in Kyiv, Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih.

These are the as it follow:

• In Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region), on April 22, the "Municipal Guard" representatives pushed journalists of the web-based edition "Pershy Kryvorizky" out of the inner yard of the executive committee of the municipal council, where the plenary session was to be held at 11:00. This was reported by the Pershy Kryvorizky.
• In Mykolaiv, on April 23, the security guards of the city council denied access to several journalists from local editions to a meeting with the deputy commission of the city council where the questions of redistribution of the budget for fight against a spread of a coronavirus COVID-19 were discussed.
• Policemen beat up the citizen journalist Bohdan Kutepov, who was on live stand up on April 29 under the Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv, and his equipment was broken. The incident occurred as the journalist covered the protest rally the entrepreneurs community had under the Cabinet of Ministers, contesting the restrictions imposed during the quarantine.

In general, most violations were reported in Kyiv and its region: five cases, four cases in Kherson, three cases in Dnipropetrovsk, two in Lviv, and on one case for each of the regions: Khmelnytskyi, Bukovina, Poltava, Odessa, Donbass, Cherkasy and Mykolaiv .

We will remind, on April 14, IMI reported about 15 cases of freedom of speech violations related to quarantine measures announced through the pandemic of the coronavirus.

As of April 21, IMI had recorded 18 quarantine-related violations of press freedoms.

If your professional journalistic rights have been violated, please, contact us to our hotline at (050) 447 70 63 and write to [email protected] .