Journalists, who were beaten during the Euromaidan, claim about the sabotage of investigation by police officers

Journalists, who suffered from the hands of security forces during the Euromaidan, claimed that law enforcement officers are only imitating investigation of cases of beatings of journalists and speak in unofficial conversations that there is no point to wait for results.

As reported by the press service of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) with reference to the evidence of the victims.

In particular, they provided the evidence of Ivan Nakonechny, cameraman of the 5 Channel, who was shoved by the officers of Berkut on the European Square, officers also broke light on his camera.

“Rubber bullet shot directly into my camera and stuck there. It was not possible to repair the equipment. I called the channel office, gave them the broken camera, they brought me a new one and I continued shooting”, – he said.

According to Nakonechny, he went to the police department with the lawyers of the channel, wrote a complaint, on several occasions he was summoned to the Prosecutor’s Office, but the case has not gone further.

“I realized that it was all in vain, retracted my complaint, since I was not physically harmed, lawyers continued working on the case. But the camera is still under examination”, – he said and added that he does not believe that somebody will be punished.

“All officers were in the masks, I have not seen who was shooting. And they won’t confess themselves”, – said Nakonechny.

There are also provided evidence of Roman Cheremskiy, a journalist of the Kharkiv newspaper Ukrainskiy Prostyr.

“In January 2014, in the center of Kharkiv I was shooting the busses with tinted windows, near which stood Berkut officers. One of the officers attacked me and attempted to stun me with electric shocker, but for some reason it did not work, then I was pulled in the bus and beaten on ribs, they smashed my camera, destroyed all records and thrown out of the bus. I went to the police, but that was just an imitation of activity”, – he said.

According to him, they tried to close the case for several times. He went to the Prosecutor’s Office with demand to continue the investigation.

“In an informal conversation I was frankly told that this case has no future. This was the end, criminal proceeding was closed. And then hostilities began in the East, of course they couldn’t investigate the case. Because something confusing was happening in the Kharkiv”, – said Cheremskiy.

He noted that among his fellow journalists in Kharkiv, the equipment of 6 persons had been damaged.

According to the summary data of the NUJU, in January 2014, 103 native and foreign journalists were beaten in Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine. Apart from the capital, most of the attacks happened in Dnipro, Cherkassy, Zaporizhia. 5 journalists were arrested in Kyiv and one arrested in the Zaporizhia. And 12 threats made to the workers of the mass media outlets were recorded during that month.

Instances of aggression by security forces are dominating among those cases.