Last week I posted a video report from Donetsk by Alina Lipp, an independent Russian-German journalist. Since then her pro-Donbas sentiments have caused her to be added to an official Ukrainian list of terrorists.
Many thanks to MissPiggy for translating this new report by Ms. Lipp, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | This message is for all those who, for some reason, want to defame me. | |
| 00:07 | As it turns out, I’m now registered | |
| 00:12 | on the official Ukrainian terrorist site | |
| 00:17 | and I’m also now listed as a Russian terrorist. That’s pretty funny, | |
| 00:21 | because I don’t even have a Russian passport. | |
| 00:26 | Why they want to defame me, I don’t know, because I just want to show | |
| 00:31 | how things really are here in Donbas, in Donetsk, for example. | |
| 00:39 | I can show proof of my entire life, my résumé, everything I’ve done, | |
| 00:45 | all my encounters, meetings, to prove there’s nothing I’m somehow hiding. | |
| 00:53 | I’m an independent journalist, and I can also prove that. | |
| 01:01 | I’m simply trying to work for peace. | |
| 01:05 | Explosions can be heard going off in the background here again. | |
| 01:09 | That’s the Ukrainian army, which has been shelling the Donbas region for the last eight years, | |
| 01:13 | and I’ve seen that with my own eyes. I’ve seen the people suffering in the outskirts. | |
| 01:19 | You know, if you want to defame me, ask yourself why? | |
| 01:27 | I’m only filming what isn’t shown in the West. | |
| 01:32 | I just want to expose an injustice, and that’s something everyone should want. | |
| 01:40 | Why should I be defamed? Why should I be prevented from exposing this injustice? | |
| 01:46 | Expose the genocide. I don’t understand it. | |
| 01:53 | Just an example: someone from T-online contacted me, to do an interview with me. | |
| 02:00 | Best regards to that gentleman. He wrote very nicely and then I answered him. | |
| 02:07 | I said, I would like to and that I would gladly answer questions, | |
| 02:11 | but that I’d like to read it through and approve the article before publication. | |
| 02:18 | Then he said: “Nah, I don’t do that.” I had the same thing happen before, | |
| 02:23 | I think it was with Der Spiegel magazine. It was a long time ago. I ask myself, | |
| 02:29 | if you don’t agree with my checking my own statements beforehand, | |
| 02:35 | then you’re basically admitting that you intend to change my statements, | |
| 02:40 | in a way that I wouldn’t agree with afterwards. | |
| 02:48 | So, it’s unbelievable. | |
| 02:52 | What kind of journalism is that? Just show the truth, | |
| 02:56 | and statements from people whom you interviewed should be what they said. | |
| 03:01 | That’s how it should be. It’s unbelievable what has become of this world, | |
| 03:05 | and what journalism has become, especially in the West. Oh well. Bye. |
When my brother died one of the local weathermen called my parents to ask a few questions because the other reporters were busy, not to catch them off guard by the familiar weatherman. It wasn’t weather related.