Press releases

14. 11. 2022.

Author: UNS

UNS: The Names and Personal Data of Serbian and Other Journalists Urgently to Be Removed from the Ukrainian Website “Myrotvorets” (“Peacekeeper”)

The Journalists’ Association of Serbia (JAS) requests the immediate removal of the personal data of Serbian journalist and its member Aljosa Milenkovic from the Ukrainian site “Myrotvorets”, which is a database of people’s private data created as a call for their liquidation.

The JAS is asking the Ukrainian Journalists’ Association as well as the Ukrainian authorities and the judiciary to react as soon as possible in order to remove the names, photos and personal data from such a list, which declares journalists as legitimate targets, and to punish those responsible for the publication, which has been earlier requested by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

JAS calls on IFJ and EFJ to renew their requests to the European institutions and the Ukrainian authorities and judiciary to remove such a list on which both Ukrainian and world media journalists were found as undesirable back in 2016 when IFJ and EFJ reacted.

In February 2017, the government of Ukraine informed the EFJ that a police investigation had been launched against the non-governmental organization behind the “Myrotvorets”, website. However, this European journalistic organization has not received to date any feedback from the government of Ukraine.

The name of Ajosa Milenkovic, a long-time reporter for Chinese English-language television - CGTN, who reported for Al Jazeera in English in 2014 from the brutal protests in Kiev, was among the 40 journalists and cameramen of foreign media that the Russian side planned for a visit to Rostov-on-Don, Mariupol in May of this year…

Their names were put on the list by the Russian Ministry of Defense and probably published on its website, according to Milenkovic’s knowledge, but he did not attend the visit organized for journalists, nor did he register for it.

It was only when a friend informed him in the beginning of June that his name on the “Myrotvorets” website that he found out he was labeled as a “propagandist of Russian Nazism and fascism” because he was on the list of the “press tour”.  

Such a list of journalists scheduled for a tour of war-torn areas of Ukraine began to be shared on the Internet, and under the post on a Ukrainian blog that “Myrotvorets” referred to, a comment was published “that they hoped everyone would be posted in `Myrotvorets`”.

The list of “press tours” that can be found on the Internet includes the names, passport numbers and dates of birth of journalists from the Associated Press, France Press and other large and small media outlets, and along with Ajosa Milenkovic, the names of Daniel Simic, a reporter for Radio and Television of the Republic of Srpska and Igor Damjanovic, a journalist for the portal IN4S, are also listed there.

 There is also the name of Miodrag Zarkovic, who is said to be a journalist of the weekly “Pecat”  on the “Myrotvorets” website since September 2016.

UNS requests that the names and personal data of these Serbian journalists and all other journalists and media workers be removed from the “Myrotvorets” website, where there is a practice to write the word “liquidated” over the photos of people whose death has been confirmed.