​RUSSIAN MFA REGARDS PROHIBITION FOR RUSSIAN JOURNALISTS TO ENTER MOLDOVA AS VIOLATION OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has perceived an entry ban imposed by Moldova on a Russian Centre TV film crew as “a blatant violation of freedom of speech” and “brazenly discriminatory attitude of the Moldovan authorities to the Russian media”.

Last Monday, at passport control at the Chisinau International Airport, a film crew from the “Postscript” program of the television channel Center TV [owned by the Moscow city government] was barred from crossing the border into the Republic of Moldova “without any explanation of comprehensible reasons”.

In the commentary by the MFA Information and Press Department, this new incident was qualified as “a link in the chain of actions as part of a deliberate campaign to hound alternative sources of information out of the information space, mounted by Chisinau so as to please the radical circles interested in fomenting anti-Russian sentiment”.

The Russian foreign ministry reminded that this was not for the first time that when entering the territory of the Republic of Moldova, Russian journalists had been subjected to such “totally unfounded and unlawful procedure”. Previously, as is known, representatives from MIA [state-owned International News Agency] Rossiya Segodnya, VGTRK [official state Russian TV] and the [Russian Ministry of Defense] TV channel Zvezda were not allowed into the republic.

“We would like to recall that the proliferating cases of bans on the entry to that country imposed under false pretences against political scientists, journalists and ordinary Russian citizens have caused a public outcry in Russia. We hope that Chisinau is aware of the possible impact which actions of this kind might have on Russian-Moldovan relations”, said the MFA commentary.

Its authors wrote that an initiative by members of the Moldovan Parliament from several political parties to push a draft law through the Parliament to ban the retransmission of Russian television and radio stations' political programs on the territory of the Republic of Moldova “cannot fail to cause serious concern”.

In his turn, Aleksey Pushkov, Chairman of the Russian State Duma foreign affairs committee and the presenter of "Postscript", has called for Russian retaliation for what he said were Moldova's actions hostile to the Russian media.

“I think that Russia should think about retaliatory measures that could be applied in relation to the Moldova media. I think that we cannot leave this kind of demonstrative hostile outbursts unanswered,” Pushkov told Russian state-owned TASS news agency (formerly ITAR-TASS). According to Pushkov, such methods are “worthy of a dictatorship”.

He has stated an intention to address to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe with an inquiry concerning such actions by Moldova that are but a violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, on the basis of which the Council of Europe functions.

Infotag’s dossier: The Moldovan Border Police officers did not let the Center TV film crew into the Republic of Moldova (and some time earlier – a film crew from Zvezda channel) because the travelers did not have an accreditation from the Moldovan foreign ministry. In both cases, the Moscow journalists were heading to Tiraspol to shoot films about the life of the unrecognized Transnistrian Moldovan Republic. In previous years, Russian journalists and other guests of Transnistria used to fly via the Odessa airport. Now, however, after an armed conflict had broken out in Ukraine, they prefer to travel via Chisinau.