Asia Journalist Association: EU Resolution Violates Principle of Press Freedom

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Lee Sang-ki, the founder of AJA and former head of the Journalist Association of Korea stated that the European Parliament "has no grounds to blame the Russian media" for spreading propaganda.

"It is obvious that this is the violation of the principle of freedom of the press,” Lee Sang-ki said.

In turn, Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, the president of AJA,  said that the resolution was adopted to distract public attention from the crisis in the Middle East, which, he believes, was caused by the West.

"NATO set fire in the Middle East, but the smoke is getting worse in Europe. All actions and resolutions taken by EU are to cover the war crimes they helped killers to commit,” Aboul-Yazid stressed.

On Wednesday, the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution on countering Russian media outlets, such as Sputnik and RT. Out of 691 lawmakers taking part in the vote, 304 voted in favor of the resolution, 179 voted against it, and 208 abstained. Therefore, less than half of the lawmakers supported the resolution.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, commenting on the adoption of the European Parliament’s resolution on Russian media, congratulated RT and Sputnik journalists on effective work and stressed that this resolution indicated apparent degradation of the concept of democracy in the Western society. Putin also expressed hope that common sense would prevail and that there would be no actual restrictions against the Russian media.