Party of Regions warned journalists for injuring MPs with their equipment they may face criminal charges

Journalists may face criminal charges if they drop their equipment from the press box down to the debating chamber and injure MPs with it. This was the statement made by the leader of the Party of the Regions faction Oleksander Yefremov during the briefing as a comment to the today's claims by the MP from the Party of the Regions Oleksander Stoian, reports UNIAN.

“I would not want any of you to end up with criminal charges. Every day, during the session I receive complaints from MPs who are afraid that a photo or a video camera would drop on their heads”, said Yefremov.

He encouraged journalists to show more respect to those people with whom they are working directly. “And not to place their lives, literally, under risks. Because if this happens somebody will have to bear responsibility and I wouldn't want to be that somebody. And a person sitting down in the chamber may suffer”, stated Yefremov.

Also, when asked by the journalists, whether it was intended to introduce any limitations on journalists' access to the press box, Yefremov answered that there was no such intention. Besides, he added that currently more than one thousand journalists are accredited with the Verkhovna Rada, but the press box can fit only 70 persons. “These days, sometimes our debating chamber of the Verkhovna Rada gathers more journalists than MPs”, stated  Yefremov.

For the context, on September 19 the MP from the Party of the Regions Oleksander Stoian asked the chair of the Verkhovna Rada Volodymyr Rybak to protect the Party of the Regions MPs from the journalists that were present in the debating chamber. He insisted that MPs must be protected from journalists' reckless actions and added that recently from the press box where the representatives of mass media a lens cap fell down on the MPs. “We have no idea whether these photo cameras are here for the journalist purposes or for some other reasons”,  stated Stoian. In his turn, the chair of the Verkhovna Rada asked the journalists to behave properly.