Dnipropetrovsk state TV channel complains about pressure by regional governor
Kyiv, March 14 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Journalists of the Dnipropetrovsk state television channel have announced that they have been experiencing pressure from Dnipropetrovsk regional administration head Viktor Bondar.
"We in fact have been a branch of the regional administration and council's press service... When Bondar was elected governor, he started tightening the screws, so that even I felt as if we were returning back [to Soviet times]," the channel's chief editor Liubov Burlakova said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.
The channels' chief executive Viktoriya Shylova, in turn, said that on February 23, officers of the State Service on Combating Economic Crimes have without any grounds sealed the channel's warehouse premises, housing some of its television equipment, in particular service instruments and materials needed for the editor's and technical staff of the channel.
"We felt an enormous pressure, when eight checks were made over a month, starting from those aimed at protecting consumers rights and ending with the State Service on Combating Economic Crimes... All these checks – regular and unscheduled – were ordered by the governor as he himself acknowledged," Shylova said.
She also said that the TV channel's journalists had already sent an address to Ukraine's president Viktor Yuschenko, MPs and relevant committees of the Ukrainian parliament asking them to influence the situation. The channel's employees have staged a number of rallies outside Dnipropetrovsk regional state administration and the presidential secretariat.
Meanwhile, the Dnipropetrovsk regional state administration has said in a statement made available to Interfax-Ukraine that all the claims of Shylova about the pressure on the channel have been due to the attempts to avoid the checks on the use of budget funds.
"The Dnipropetrovsk regional state television and radio company has lately faced problems because of the aggressive behavior of its director general Shylova, who, trying to avoid the checks on the use of budget funds is attempting to transfer this issue into the field of the freedom of speech," the statement reads.