Russia effectively controls Crimea and Russian President Vladimir Putin says he reserves the right to use force to protect its interests in the region. Tom Clark and Paul Johnson report from Ukraine.
It wasn’t the birthday surprise Global National correspondent Paul Johnson might have imagined, but while reporting in the Crimean capital Simferopol on Tuesday, armed men tried to prevent him, Global cameraman Mike Gill and their local fixer from taking video at a military base.
The scene, where Russian and Ukrainian troops have both stood guard for days, was relatively calm.
Johnson had visited the same site a day earlier, which he described as a “remarkable” and “strange” situation, with Ukrainian troops holding fort inside the base and Russia-aligned soldiers standing watch outside.
Johnson noted in his report on Monday neither side would respond to questions about the situation.
When Johnson returned on Tuesday and began setting up the camera on a hill looking down at the base, two soldiers emerged from the bushes and told them they weren’t allowed to shoot footage from the vantage point and ordered them to move to another spot.
After carrying on and making a second attempt to set up the equipment, Johnson said an armoured vehicle rolled up and several armed, uniformed men got out.
The soldiers again ordered Johnson and his crew to move away. But, this time, as they walked back down the hill, the soldiers followed and one man began acting aggressively and started shoving Johnson in the back with the butt of his rifle.
In the end, they all made it safely back to their vehicle and moved on to the port city of Sevastopol.
“I was disappointed by the treatment I received at the hands of the pro-Moscow gunmen I encountered today outside Simferopol,” Johnson said.
“I am legally permitted by the government of Ukraine to be working as a journalist here, and was conducting myself in an, open, polite and professional manner.”
“The gunmen who threatened my cameraman and I are not part of any legal authority here, and at the time I was shoved repeatedly by one of them I was moving away from they area they were concerned about. This was unnecessary and malicious use of force.”
According to Johnson, it’s not the only instance of journalists being harassed while covering the crisis.
He said an Al Jazeera crew told him they had been threatened at gunpoint on Tuesday.
As well, ABC journalist Alexander Marquardt tweeted that he and his crew had guns pointed at them twice on Tuesday, in different locations.
On Monday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued a statement urging authorities in the autonomous region of Crimea to “ensure that media outlets and independent journalists are allowed to report on the political crisis in the region without being censored or harassed.”
CPJ said there were reports in the past days of a TV station being shut down and a raid at an investigative journalism agency by masked men. It also said an independent journalist said she had been assaulted and had her camera taken.
“We call on all parties involved in the crisis in Ukraine to allow journalists to report safely, freely, and without fear of reprisal,” CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia Coordinator Nina Ognianova said in the statement.
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