US actions against RT are ‘terrorism’ – Russian human rights chief
The actions taken by US authorities against RT can be qualified as terrorism and a violation of media freedom, Russia’s top human rights official Tatyana Moskalkova has said.
Moskalkova was commenting on a statement by the US-based Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), which has demanded that American President Joe Biden’s administration provide the public with evidence to support its claim that the Russian channel was “engaged in information operations, covert influence, and military procurement.”
On Thursday, FPF said the information released to justify new sanctions against the news channel, “did not include declassification of the underlying documents, but only their findings.”
Writing on Telegram on Saturday, Moskalkova argued the public has not been provided with “a single piece of evidence” to prove the accusations against RT, but “the repressive mechanism has begun to work.”
The US is cracking down on Russian media, and some journalists have had to leave the country for safety reasons, Moskalkova wrote. She also mentioned an incident in which an RT employee was searched and interrogated by FBI agents.
“It is outrageous when 20 FBI agents burst into a woman’s house in the morning, arrange a search and a five-hour interrogation, seize mobile devices, and examine personal correspondence,” the official explained.
Such actions “cannot be qualified otherwise than as terrorism and infringement of media freedom by the United States, contradicting the fundamental principles of democracy, which is so often talked about by the US authorities,” she emphasized.
Earlier in September, Washington announced new sanctions against several Russian media outlets, including RT, claiming they are attempting to undermine democracy in the US and elsewhere and erode global support for Ukraine.
Following the new restrictions, US tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, banned several Russian news networks, including RT, citing alleged “foreign interference activity.” On Saturday, video-sharing platform TikTok deleted the accounts of RT International and several branches of the Sputnik news outlet.
