An Austrian journalist banned from entering Ukraine has said he and his employer, Austrian public broadcaster ORF, will “use all possible legal means to fight the situation.”
Speaking to the Kyiv Post on March 12, Christian Wehrschuetz, ORF’s Kyiv bureau chief, rebuffed the Ukrainian authorities’ claims that he had illegally entered Ukraine, saying that he “always played by the rules.”
Wehrschuetz was banned from Ukraine on March 7, with a spokesman for the Austrian Foreign Ministry saying that the Ukrainian authorities had called the journalist a “threat to national security.”
Wehrschuetz told the Kyiv Post that he had been informed of the ban by the Austrian Foreign Ministry and that he had not been contacted by the Ukrainian authorities himself.
Wehrschuetz was given a one-year ban, although the usual penalty for this offense is a three-year ban.
The journalist denied violating any Ukrainian laws and said he wants to challenge the ban to entry Ukraine “by all available legal means.”
Wehrschuetz told the Kyiv Post that he had entered Crimea in July 2018 from mainland Ukraine, and had not subsequently illegally exited and entered Ukraine via the Kerch Bridge between Crimea and Russia, as Ukraine’s SBU security service had claimed.
“A local (Crimean) camera crew crossed the bridge (to Russia). I waited on the Crimean side, and I did not go to the bridge.”
Wehrschuetz also denied ever crossing illegally into the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas.
Confusingly, Ukraine’s SBU security service on March 9 gave a yet another reason for the ban: it was needed for the journalist’s own safety, the service said.
In a post on Facebook, the SBU wrote that: “Christian Wehrschuetz had stressed in an interview there were threats to his life in Ukraine. In order to avoid possible provocations during the Austrian journalist’s stay in our country, the SBU has decided to ban his entry in accordance with the law.”
Wehrschuetz denied this was the case, saying his words had been misinterpreted. He said that he was among the journalists in the database of Myrotvorets, a website of “enemies of Ukraine,” who had gained accreditation in Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas. He said these journalists had been threatened as a group, and said he did not want to be threatened with violence – but that there had been no actual threats to his life in Ukraine.
The SBU also earlier told media officers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that Wehrschuetz had published propaganda and anti-Ukrainian posts on the internet.
Wehrschuetz told the Kyiv Post he speaks to all sides in the conflict. He said one possible reason for the “propaganda” claim was that ORF had aired his interviews with Crimean Tatars who were cooperating with the Russian occupation authorities.
He also said that ORF and himself would not be giving interviews to Russian media regarding his ban “so that they do not misuse this situation against Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Austria Oleksandr Scherba, who was summoned to the Austrian Foreign Ministry on March 12, said after his meeting there that the ban on Wehrschuetz was not an issue of censorship, as Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl had earlier claimed.
Kneissl on March 7 called the decision of the Ukrainian authorities to be “an act of censorship, unacceptable in Europe.” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz declared his intention to cooperate “closely with the Foreign Ministry,” apparently supporting Kneissl’s opinion.
Kneissl said she intends to raise the issue at the meeting of EU foreign ministers on March 18, 2019 in Brussels.
Commenting on the case, lawmaker Olga Chervakova, the first deputy chairwoman of parliament’s committee on freedom of speech, wrote on Facebook that this was “not a media problem, or a freedom of speech problem.”
Instead, she said, this was a problem with Wehrschuetz himself.
“Violating the sovereignty of a national border is a crime,” Chervakova said. “Being a journalist doesn’t make one immune from punishment.”
