On Saturday, February 15, female activists from the “Sister sotnia” movement of the local EuroMaidan in Dnipropetrovsk picketed the building of the local municipal “34 TV Channel” in Dnipropetrovsk, demanding unbiased coverage of the political events in the region. The girls and women held photos of activists beaten by the government-sponsored “titushky” thugs and a photo of the Serhiy Nigoyan who was killed on Hrushevskiy Str. saying: “So, this is how the truth looks like?”
The main slogan of the event was: “If you cannot tell the truth, better be quiet”. Some of the activists plastered their mouth with the tape, the others were chanting “Dnipropetrovsk deserves to know the truth!”, “Truth cannot be hidden!”. They also distributed fliers saying “Believing TV means not respecting yourself”.
The women said that they came to the building of the municipal TV Channel to express their indignation to the journalists and the management of the channel about their information policy. On January 26, three journalists of the channel got injures because of being attacked by athletic-looking guys when the protests took place near the Local State Administration. Even after that, this mass medium kept reporting on the events in an biased way to please the government.
“Mass media is a fourth branch of power. Toadying to the other branches of power, journalists bear the same responsibility for repressions, blood, and deaths of innocent people,” – informed the activists of the picket.
Nobody came out of the building of the TV Channel to the protesters. The activists gave their present to the TV Channel, a CD with the ballet “Swan Lake”, via the cameraman.
“Swan Lake” is one of the ways to keep silent in order not to lie that was tested in the Soviet times time,” one of the activists said.
Broadcasts of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet “Swan Lake” were used in Soviet times to shroud important political processes from the citizens. It became a symbol of the fall of the Soviet Union. “Swan Lake” was on the air when Brezhnev died in 1982. It was also broadcasted during the “August Putsch” in 1991.
Translated by Oleksandra Kondratenko
Edited by Alya Shandra
Source: Radio Svoboda
