Monday, March 17, 2014, 23:36
On the road from Crimea to the mainland of Ukraine, Russian soldiers seized equipment and accused the camera crew of the largest Norwegian media corporation, NRK, of spying. Telekritika reports this with reference to NRK’s site. The incident occurred on Tuesday, March 11, when journalists were returning from Crimea by car and passed a checkpoint controlled by unknown masked people.
“The people who are at these checkpoints are Russian soldiers, but without any markings. They do everything they want. Russians deny that it is their security forces. However, the checkpoints are fully occupied by armored personnel carriers, many soldiers and trucks,” said an NRK journalist in a story about the victims.
One member of the NRK crew, Jan Espen Kruse, confirmed that the Russian soldiers were guarding the checkpoint. “No one at this checkpoint hid the fact that they were Russians, but they did not have chevrons of the Russian flag on their uniforms,” said the journalist. He also suggested that the people in the uniform guarding PPC have a special order to seize computers and other equipment. “They took our three laptops and data storage devices with the filmed material: floppy disks, USB flash cards and a small camera.
There was no question about returning the items taken away; they said that if I don’t give up all this, they’ll shoot,” said the journalist in an article for the NRK website. “The Russian soldiers were extremely aggressive; claimed we were spies.”
In addition, as reported by the journalists of from Norwegian channel, the men in uniform took away their protection – body armor, helmets. The journalists also reported that they would not complain to law enforcement officials about the incident because they do not believe that there are agencies that can help journalists in such situations.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway Borhe Brende has already responded to the event. He promised to raise the issue with the authorities of Ukraine and Russia. However, since the beginning of the Russian occupation, the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) of Crimea recorded at least 62 incidents of grave violations of freedom of expression on the peninsula.
The original text is on Ukrainska Pravda at: http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/03/14/7018774/
