Photo credit: Press service of Nestor Shufrych/KP.ua
Nestor Shufrych, MP from “Opposition Platform-For-Life” commented on protest voiced by theMedia Movement “Media for conscious choice” against his candidacy for the chairman of the parliamentary Committee on freedom of speech. “It is everyone's right to express their position on my eventual nomination. We will work, so it will be opportunity to give an assessment, ” as Shufrych said on August 29 on the sidelines of the Verkhovna Rada
to Radio Liberty.
"If I am appointed to this post, we have some restrictions about the action plan, unfortunately, because
most of the committee's powers are transferred to the so-called committee on humanitarian and information policy," the MP said.
“I will propose two main aspects to supervise by our committee. This will be the physical protection of journalists, we are to require the law enforcement agencies to guarantee the safety of the journalists, no matter what media they represent, who owns them and what they say. And the second issue is to provide protection for legal entities, including online editions, because we see that there have recently been several attempts to arrest servers, to block the work of online editions. Now we observe what is happening with "Pryamyy", 112th and "NewsOne". All this will be matter of meticulous attention of our committee and an appropriate response,” Shufrich said.
IMI reported, on August 26, following the results of the session of the preparatory group on the work of the Verkhovna Rada, the official of the party "Opposition Platform - For Life" (OPFL) Vadym Rabinovych told that his faction was proposed to head the Committee on freedom of speech.
On August 27,
Media Movement claimed against the appointment of a OPFL representative as chairman of the Committee on freedom of speech.
On August 28, reporters of the
TV channel and the Espresso website protested against the appointment of Nestor Shufrych as chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on freedom of speech.
