Foreign Ministry statement on the permanent deletion by YouTube of RT’s German-language projects
YouTube, a video hosting service, has committed an act of unprecedented information aggression against RT media holding’s German-language projects with the obvious tacit consent of Germany, if not at its insistence.
Two RT-operated channels, RT DE and Der Fehlende Part, were permanently deleted. In an attempt to justify what amounts to an obvious act of censorship and suppression of the freedom of expression, the online giant tried to link these outrageous actions to some abstract violations of “community guidelines.” These explanations cannot and will not be accepted.
There is no doubt that YouTube undertook these illegal actions against the fourth most popular German-language media project in the News and Politics category with the support, both public and tacit, of the German authorities and the local media. For many years they have openly and unscrupulously stigmatised and persecuted correspondents of Russian broadcasters, including by blocking their bank accounts, slandering them in public, etc.
The objective behind this act of aggression against the Russian media holding’s projects is clear: to silence information sources that do not fit into what the German officials view as a comfortable media landscape.
Momentary interests have therefore prevailed over the “norms and values” proclaimed by the liberals. Through their actions, the American online platform and the German authorities have in an instant deprived 700,000 German-speaking subscribers to these channels of the ability to use the source of information they chose.
The date chosen for carrying out this plan, hopefully not code-named “Operation Info-Barbarossa,” is especially cynical, since it is on September 28 that the International Day for Universal Access to Information is observed.
These developments perfectly fit into the logic of the information war unleashed against Russia. Accordingly, taking retaliatory tit-for-tat measures against the German media in Russia would not only be appropriate, but imperative, even more so considering that these media outlets have been caught interfering in Russia’s domestic affairs on numerous occasions. Taking into consideration that Germany has repeatedly ignored calls to return to compliance with its international commitments to protect media rights and the freedom of speech, we believe measures of this kind to be the only means to spark an interest among our partners in discussing this unacceptable situation in a constructive and meaningful dialogue.
Having reviewed RT’s appeal for protection against discrimination, the Foreign Ministry has decided to ask the competent agencies of the Russian Federation to draft and adopt retaliatory measures regarding YouTube video hosting service and the German media.
