Protest and Request from Civic Media Association to the Ukrainian Foreign Afairs Ministry

To: Ukrainian Foreign Ministry
The Ukrainian Embassy in Romania
HE Konstantin Grişcenko
HE Markiyan Kulyk

Sirs,
We ask you to revoke immediately the interdiction for Romanian journalists Valentin Tigau and Simona Lazar, who were prohibited to enter in present Ukraine and were declared “persona non grata” for 5 years starting 2009.

Also we would like you to formulate a public apologize for restricting their fundamental rights, freedom of movement and freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

As you must know, this Saturday, on 16 of July, two buses with more than 100 Romanian and Moldavian citizens on board – among them journalists, students, officials and NGO representatives – were kept for hours at the Reni customs house on the border between Moldova and Ukraine.

The Romanians and Moldavians citizens of Romanian ethnic origin were planning to attend the dedication of the first Romanian Orthodox Church rebuild in Ukraine , in Romanian minority village Hagi Curda – renamed Kamasovka in Ukrainian.

At the border, two Romanian journalists were turned back. The others, 130 persons, were eventually allowed to enter Ukraine and attend the event, following the intervention of the Romanian Consulate representatives in Odessa send by the Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry (MFA).

The two Romanian journalists were taken by a Police car and taken outside the Ukrainian territory. They were informed that they have a five year interdiction in Ukraine starting in 2009, an act that nobody informed them about.

The two journalists, Valentin Tigau, an editor from National Public Radio (Radio Romania Actualitati – Radio Romania International) and former press corespondent in Republic of Moldova, and Simona Lazar, from Jurnalul National daily newspaper, had traveled in 2009 in the former Romanian province of south of Bessarabia, since Stalin will from 1944 inside the borders of Soviet Ukrainian Republic, now Ukraine. They published their reports in a series that can be found also on a dedicated Blog – http://www.romanii-de-langa-noi.blogspot.com – “The Romanians along us”.

Simona Lazar stated that they were told that they are not allowed to enter Ukraine for five years’ time, the interdiction being issued in 2009 and that back then the two spent four days in Ukraine , working on several reports on the Romanian community there, the Romanian language in the education system and other similar issues. “We were surprised to find out we are not allowed to enter…,” Simona Lazar stated for Mediafax News Agency.

In an public statement gave for “Curentul” daily, Simona Lazar and Valentin Tigau stressed out that this is o commune problem for Eastern countries with a lack of democracy and who are not respecting the elementary and fundamental rights, such as freedom of movement, freedom of expression and freedom of the press. “Our story is not new. Hundred and thousands of other journalists have suffered for telling the truth. Some paid with their own life, such as Gheorghi Gondgadze. Despite this tragic events, journalists have not stopped to seek the truth in order to present them to the people, hoping to change for the better the world we live in. This is what we have done. Our “guilt”. We believed we are not wrong”.

In the past, especially during the dictatorship of hardliner communist Leonind Kucima, such acts were frequent against Romanian journalists and writers traveling for documentation in Ukraine . In a similar Protest to the Romanian Presidency, from that period, it was underlined that the number of “journalist non grata” in Ukraine was rising year by year: Marian Voicu and his team from the Romanian National Public TV Station TVR, Victor Roncea, at that time Foreign Department Chief Editor with “ZIUA” daily, George Muntean, writer and former vice president of Cultural and Literature Society from Bukovine, Ion Beldeanu, writer, president of the Writers Associations of Suceava, Eugen Patras, former vice president al Romanian Cultural Society “Mihai Eminescu” from Cernauti, etc. We are surprised that these Soviet type of actions are reviving in supposedly democratic Ukraine of today.

Please take all the appropriate actions in order to stop for the future such violation of fundamental rights and freedom of the press as Ukraine sustains that would like to be part of the European family and share the European values that we all respect.

We remind you what a great leader of Romania once stated: “Every Nation has its rights and its duties. There must be respected our rights and the rights of our brothers, which are today outside our borders, as we do respect those of the foreigners that are inside our borders. Lesser than this it cannot be pretended and more than this we cannot offer.”

We are awaiting for your public apology.

Never the less we are awaiting from a minimal sign also from our MFA which kind of forget to defend the rights of the citizens who represents and seems to be more friendly with you than with the Romanians.

Details:
Victor Roncea,
Journalist / Editor
President
www.CivicMedia.ro

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