In Lviv, on Rynok Square, the exhibition “Call the War and War: Russian Crimes against the Media in Ukraine from February 24, 2022” opened. The project aims to tell the story of journalists who died, were captured or persecuted as a result of a full-scale war waged by Russia against Ukraine.
During the exhibition, colleagues and friends of the injured journalists showed their photos and told their stories. The participants of the event were: Hromadske journalist Mariana Pietsukh, Radio Liberty journalist Halyna Tereshchuk, Public Board member Dmytro Khorkin, political scientist, friend of the American Brent Renault journalist Mykola Davydyuk, who died in the war, and others.
“Our exhibition here in Lviv is called” Call the war a war “and for us, journalists, media experts, human rights activists, it has two main goals. On the one hand, it is a gesture of our solidarity with all those colleagues who continue to work and tell the truth about Russia’s war against Ukraine, despite the danger to their own lives. On the other hand, we want to urge all international journalists today to remember the meaning of words and call war a war, not a crisis, a conflict or a military operation, “the organizers said.
It should be noted that since February 24 during the war in Ukraine 5 journalists were killed, 9 more were wounded, 1 went missing and 2 are in captivity (according to the Institute of Mass Media as of March 28). In addition, human rights organizations continue to record cases of abductions, threats and torture of journalists covering the crimes of the Russian occupiers in our country. These methods of the aggressor are reminiscent of Russia’s actions in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine in the east and Crimea, where all independent media disappeared after 2014 and journalists who dared to tell the truth were taken prisoner or in Russian prisons.
The exhibition will be available on Rynok Square until April 4. It is supported by the Ukrainian Branch of the International PEN Club, the Lviv Media Forum, the Institute of Mass Media, Ukraine Media Center, the Lviv City Council, and the Georgy Gongadze Prize.