"Closing a Facebook account or any Internet link of a media, without prior warning, can be considered as an act of censorship opposed by the IFJ," Leruth said.
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He also stressed that "whenever one considers a media is spreading fake news, he or she should ask for a rectification of the fake information, and if the media refuses, various reactions still exist, some of them on the judicial field. Closing brutally any link doesn't respect this normal way of doing, and for this reason, I condemn it as an act of censorship."
Reacting to the move, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday that Facebook's decision to block pages related to RT was unacceptable, and Russia was waiting for a response from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The ministry stressed Facebook's actions breached internationally accepted freedom of expression principles.
Earlier in the day, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Sputnik and RT, said that media platforms were being used as tools in "a geopolitical confrontation."