{"id":1460038,"date":"2022-05-02T08:59:41","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T12:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1460038"},"modified":"2022-05-02T08:59:44","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T12:59:44","slug":"ukraine-making-arrests-after-passing-disinformation-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ukraine-making-arrests-after-passing-disinformation-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine Making Arrests After Passing \u201cDisinformation Law\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fukraine-making-arrests-after-passing-disinformation-law%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1460038&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>It would appear that it\u2019s not just Alejandro Mayorkas who is setting up a Ministry of Truth in a supposedly free and democratic country and policing the speech of citizens. It turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thought that was a fine idea as well, so he worked with his country\u2019s legislature to put a similar program in place following Russia\u2019s invasion of his country. His government is seeking to identify \u201ctraitors\u201d who have expressed support for Russia and its war against \u201cNazis\u201d in Ukraine. Anyone who has been materially aiding the enemy is of course subject to prosecution, but people have been arrested just for expressing their support for Moscow on social media. That\u2019s what happened to a man known only as \u201cVictor\u201d this month. Ukrainian security officers in full riot gear showed up at his apartment in Kharkiv to talk to him about some of his social media posts <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/russia-ukraine-putin-europe-kharkiv-51c514b6dc9cc1f935e018e4877222cc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">before hauling him off to jail<\/a>. (Associated Press)<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cYes, I supported (the Russian invasion of Ukraine) a lot. I\u2019m sorry. \u2026 I have already changed my mind,\u201d said Viktor, his trembling voice showing clear signs of duress in the presence of the Ukrainian security officers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet your things and get dressed,\u201d an officer said before escorting him out of the apartment. The SBU did not reveal Viktor\u2019s last name, citing their investigation.<\/p>\n<p>Viktor was one of nearly 400 people in the Kharkiv region alone who have been detained under anti-collaboration laws enacted quickly by Ukraine\u2019s parliament and signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Russia\u2019s Feb. 24 invasion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If four hundred people have been locked up just in the Kharkiv region under these disinformation laws, how many have been detained across the entire country? It\u2019s almost certainly in the thousands, and all in a matter of a couple of months. To his credit, Zelensky at least got the Parliament to write up a law and signed it, which is better than doing it via an executive order the way Joe Biden did, but it\u2019s still an alarming development.<\/p>\n<p>I understand that a lot of bad things can happen during the fog of war, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is no exception. And any Ukrainians who may have been providing physical aid to the Russian invaders or providing them with intelligence aimed at endangering their fellow Ukrainian citizens should certainly be held accountable. That\u2019s the same as the American concept of providing \u201caid and comfort\u201d to the enemy during a time of war. That\u2019s the textbook definition of treason.<\/p>\n<p>But clearly, some of these Ukrainians who were detained have done nothing more than publishing social media posts supporting Moscow and the invasion or repeating Russian talking points about \u201cNazis\u201d and similar language. How anyone, including the Russians, could support this sort of unprovoked military attack is beyond me, but we\u2019re really still just talking about speech here. It\u2019s an unpopular (if not completely absurd) position to take, but does the Ukrainian democracy the world is rushing to defend support free speech or not?<\/p>\n<p>We already know that a similar situation has existed in Russia from the beginning. Anyone who spoke out of turn about the invasion using unapproved language \u2013 including journalists \u2013 was quickly hauled from the public square and locked up. How is what Ukraine is doing any different? It\u2019s not, at least as far as I can tell.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the United States has surrendered the high ground in terms of speaking up about this. We now have our own Ministry of Truth in the Department of Homeland Security where our own Orwellian Santa Clause will be making a list and checking it twice to see who is engaging in speech not approved by the Biden administration. How can we criticize Zelenski for doing the same thing that his biggest foreign supporter is doing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It would appear that it\u2019s not just Alejandro Mayorkas who is setting up a Ministry of Truth in a supposedly free and democratic country and policing the speech of citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1460038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}