INCIDENTALLY

To protest against governmental crackdown and the politico-economic atmosphere in which free press vanishes, about a hundred Odesa journalists and militants of the Odesa Memorial society picketed the oblast state administration on June 6 at 12 noon. The one- hour-long picketing came off under the slogans “Free press to free Ukraine,” “Vertical hierarchy is mother of censorship,” “Trials of newspapers mean short shrift for readers,” “Unanimity of thoughts is fools’ consolation,” and so on. Representatives of the newspapers Yug (South), Slovo (Word), Pravoye delo (The Right Cause), Rabota i otdykh (Work and Recreation) and other media published the Joint Odesa Newspaper to time with Journalists’ Day, on whose pages they described a very unattractive situation in which independent Odesa mass media and the Ukrainian press as a whole found themselves as a result of suppression by bureaucrats of different levels. Also taking part in the picket were members of the Guild of Odesa Special Correspondents of Central Publications, Information Agencies, and Radio Stations, The Day ’s Mykhailo AKSANIUK reports.

The appeal to the central and regional authorities, which the picketers intended to hand over to oblast administration officials, says, in particular: “The ruination and disappearance of mass media is no less dangerous for society and the state than economic and cultural decline as a whole.” The authors of this document called upon parliament members from the Odesa region to contest a number of standard-setting acts in defense of the freedom of expression and the press, which would rule out division of the media into “friendly” (state- run) and “alien” (independent), the latter being subject to oppression by inspection bodies and elimination by unfair court decisions.

Serhiy Hrynevetsky, chairman of the oblast state administration, failed to accept the picketers’ address because at that time he attended a meeting with... representatives of the press at the House of Scientists.