MOSCOW, August 11 (RIA Novosti) – The detention or capture of media employees in Ukraine is unacceptable and a journalist should not be prevented from doing his job, rights group Amnesty International said Monday.
“We believe that media representatives, journalists should not be captives. We strongly oppose any cases when civilians or the press are taken captive by any of the warring sides,” Sergei Nikitin, head of the organization’s Moscow office told RIA Novosti.
He stressed that both sides of the internal armed conflict in Ukraine should respect the rights of journalists not only in relation to this particular case with Andrei Stenin from the news agency Rossiya Segodnya, but also in any other similar situations involving media employees.
“A journalist should not have any restrictions in his work and, naturally, we always express concern when a journalist is taken captive,” Nikitin added.
On Monday, Russia’s Civic Chamber addressed international human rights organizations Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International with a plea to help find missing photographer Stenin who went missing in Ukraine on August 5.
According to sources at the headquarters of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, the photographer might have left for the city of Shakhtarsk with the militia’s press corps, where Right Sector militants could have detained him.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) in the Zaporizhia Region may be detaining Stenin, though a spokesman for the local SBU office denied such allegations.
