A correspondent of the newspaper “Fakty i komentarii” was beaten in Odessa

The appeal of the Odessa Guild of correspondents:

On 19 November, at 20:45, Aleksandr Levit, a correspondent of the all-Ukrainian newspaper “Fakty i komentarii”, was attacked by several strangers.

The men hit the journalist on his head for several times, knocked him down and began to kick him. The attackers warned the journalist: “This is only the beginning, and later we will murder you”. A. Levit got the bodily injures of various degree of gravity.

The criminals did not take either money, or valuables, or the cell phone, therefore they beat the journalist with another purpose. A. Levit handed the official complaint about the attack to the Primorskiy district militia precinct.

We believe that this crime, committed against a member of the Odessa Guild of correspondents, evidences on helplessness of the power and law-enforcing organs. The publications by Levit are very acute and principal, which, naturally, irritates the officials and other influential persons.

A. Levit carried out the journalistic investigation of the arbitrary actions of the workers of a café, situated in one of the houses at Panteleymonovskaya Street, towards the tenants of the house. Maybe, the position of the journalist in this conflict caused the attack on him, as well as the beating of his father, a 80-year-old veteran of the WW2, participant of the Grigoryevskiy landing, defense and liberation of Odessa, a veteran of journalism.

We regard this crime, committed against our colleague, as another attempt of pressure on journalists, who have their own opinion about the events occurring in Odessa. We keep in mind the beatings of Igor Rozov, Stanislav Shandar and Arkadiy Romm, the members of the Giuld, as well as intimidation by phone of other journalists of all-Ukrainian mass media, who work in Odessa.

We demand from the Odessa oblast state administration, mayor Ruslan Bodelan, oblast militia directorate and the Odessa city militia directorate to comment this scandalous crime against the journalist, to conduct the effective investigation of the crime and to inform the public about the measures taken for the prevention of such facts in future.

Viacheslav Voronkov, the president of the Odessa Guild of correspondents