MOSCOW, August 21 (RIA Novosti) – Christoph Hoerstel, a renowned German journalist and the head of a pacifist organization Friedenskreis (Circle of Peace), on Thursday urged Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to see to it that Russian photojournalist Andrei Stenin was set free “as soon as possible.”
“When journalists and their work are no longer protected, victims are left voiceless, politics cannot be set right, and democracy suffers,” Hoerstel said in a petition which is available for signing.
Andrei Stenin, a Russian photojournalist with Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, disappeared in eastern Ukraine on August 5. He is feared to be held by Ukraine’s security service SBU on charges of terrorism.
“Even when there is concern that a journalist has acted in violation of their duties or misused their powers, it is still wrong to use violence or incarceration to prevent this. An internationally respected way of solving such problems would certainly be to revoke their accreditation or deport them,” the petition read.
“A last-resort option would be to bring a court case against the country’s international reputation, its government and authorities, which is still better than [a journalist’s] vanishing without a trace,” Christoph Hoerstel stressed.
“If Andrei Stenin is served justice, this may eventually sway even those who have up until now been critical of the government in Ukraine while also strengthening their trust in the state,” the journalist emphasized.
Stenin went missing when he was reporting on the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including from the cities of Donetsk and Slaviansk.
Press freedom conditions in Ukraine, especially in the volatile southeastern regions, have steadily deteriorated in recent months, with journalists being detained, attacked, abducted, and killed.
Please support Andrei Stenin’s release by sharing the hashtag #FreeAndrew in social networks. Andrei is a professional war photographer reporting from the most dangerous war zones in the world. You can view Andrei’s pictures from Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya here and his most recent shots from eastern Ukraine here.
