What prompted this move was the revelation that a draft report on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity, complied by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, ignores instances of murders, attacks and threats where the victims were Russian journalists.
“This is not the first time that UNESCO has essentially denied Russian journalists the right to defend their rights, even though by definition UNESCO should be neutral and treat all countries with equal attention,” RT pointed out in a statement.
The media agency then proceeded to list a number of cases involving RT journalists that should have been mentioned in Azoulay’s report but, for some reason, were not included.
These included an assassination attempts against RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and five other prominent Russian journalists, organized by a neo-Nazi group and likely orchestrated by Ukrainian spy agency SBU.
The UNESCO report also ignored the murders Russian journalists Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, both of whom were assassinated at Ukriane’s behest; and the killings of Oleg Klokov, Boris Maksudov and Rostislav Zhuravlev, who were murdered in the Ukrainian conflict zone by militants loyal to Kiev, Channel One pointed out.
“Behind all these tragedies are the lives of people who honestly fulfilled their professional duty, and it is the duty of UNESCO’s leadership to take all necessary measures to ensure that such incidents do not happen again in the future,” RT declared.