Ukrainian Parliament Committee to send request to Security Service about surveillance of Bihus.Info journalists

The Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) Committee on Freedom of Speech will soon formulate a request to the Security Service of Ukraine to investigate who is involved in the surveillance of Bihus.Info journalists. Source: Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Chairman of the Committee and MP from the Voice party, on air of Radio Liberty Quote: "This is definitely obstruction [of work], this is definitely pressure, these are definitely illegal actions.

However, it is the responsibility of law enforcement to find out those who committed them. Otherwise, the suspicions that are already being voiced from all sides that it was the law enforcement agencies themselves, acting in the interests of someone in power, will be essentially confirmed.

The silence of the Security Service of Ukraine, without whose permission such recordings could not have been made, the National Police, and the Prosecutor General's Office, rather points against them."  Details: Yurchyshyn said that it is necessary to separate the facts of alleged drug use from the fact of spying on journalists.

"This is definitely out of bounds. Neither a journalist's certificate, nor a MP's certificate, nor a prosecutor's certificate, nor the status of a judge allows you to break the law. But the proof of breaking the law must also be obtained within the law," he said.

The committee will meet to discuss the system of violations of journalists' professional rights, which has been manifested by a number of recent events: the attack on Mykhailo Tkach, a journalist of Ukrainska Pravda, obstruction of a journalist's work in Mykolaiv and a provocation against investigator Yurii Nikolov.

The members of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech have requested a criminal investigation into the latter incident.

Background:

• On 16 January, a video was leaked online showing employees of the Bihus.Info investigative project supposedly using drugs, and the project's head, Denys Bihus, recorded a video message with explanations and stated that everyone who works with Bihus.Info would take drug tests.
• Later, Bihus said that after talking to the people involved in the video, it turned out that members of the Bihus.Info editorial team had been under surveillance for about a year, and that fragments of intercepted conversations were edited together from several episodes that took months to complete.

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