The Chairman of the Committee on Freedom and Speech and Information Ihor Miroshnychenko told the interns about the state of freedom of speech in Ukraine and noted that the modern sphere of media is often censored. Meanwhile, the people’s deputy stressed that sometimes “censorship is necessary phenomenon for preventing uncontrollable stream of information that can be used for illegitimate purposes, particularly, on the internet.”
While familiarizing the interns with his legislative activities, I.Miroshnychenko drew attention to the bill on amendments to several legislative acts of Ukraine re prevention of blocking mass media activities (Reg. No. 2122). The bill suggests amending the Civil Procedural and Economic Procedural Codes, the Code of Administrative Proceedings of Ukraine. It is suggests also supplementing the laws “On Television and Radio Broadcasting” and “On Print Media in Ukraine”.
According to I.Miroshnychenko, the respective amendments will implement constitutional right of Ukrainian citizens for freedom of speech and free activities of mass media.
I.Miroshnychenko spoke also about the necessity of mass media denationalization and limiting the influence of state authority’s bodies and local self-government bodies on print media. That is why people’s deputy participated in development of the draft law No. 2600 “On reforming print media”.
The people’s deputy Bohdan Beniuk noted during his speech that he does not relate his legislative activities with his professional activities.
B.Beniuk is one of the coauthors of the resolution on parliamentary hearings “On the status of human rights observance in Ukraine" (June 12, 2013), “Ukrainian trade migration: state problems and their solving” (July 3, 2013), the draft resolution “State guarantee and practical support of the status of Ukrainian language as the state language”.
The interns met also with the director of the Democratic Initiatives Fund, specialist in the sphere of political and electoral sociology and personal sociology Iryna Bereshkina. According to her, the sociologists work most actively during the election campaigns. I.Bereshkina noted also that the “lawmakers do not use work of sociologists during the preparation of the bills.”
The USAID Mission Director Jed Barton said that the aim of the Internship Program in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and Central Executive Bodies is the support of democratization in Ukraine. He said also that the Program has already functioned for 18 years, “and it is significant achievement for the Mission, as it became one the best examples of technical support of the United States of America to the democratization of Ukraine.”
Information has been prepared with participation of the interns from the Internship Program