Journalists to be cordoned off in parliament
Journalists believe the young man sitting to have dropped the item which has prompted renewed calls from Party of the Regions MPs to be protected
Ukrainska Pravda reports that Verkhovna Rada Speaker Rybak stated on Tuesday evening that he intended to issue an instruction to have a glass barrier placed around the journalists’ balcony in parliament. This followed calls from his fellow Party of the Regions MPs for measures to protect them from journalists after a few incidents when leaflets were dropped calling for Tymoshenko’s release, and one when a part of a camera fell. First Mykhailo Myronenko and then Oleksandr Stoyan, the latter not for the first time. demanded “protection”.
Ukrainska Pravda quotes journalist Max Levin as saying that the item which fell belonged to the camera of a young man who takes photographs in the Verkhovna Rada for the Party of the Regions.
As reported, these initiatives from the Party of the Regions are not new. Separating journalists off would have one other effect, this being to prevent journalists from recording illegal but common incidents where MPs “vote” for their absent colleagues.