Gonzalo Lira is a Chilean-American journalist who was recently arrested in Ukraine over a series of YouTube videos he’d published critical of the Ukraine gov...

AI summary:

A Chilean journalist, Gonzalo Lira, who had been living in Ukraine, was arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine on suspicion of pro-Russian sympathies and criticizing the government. He had been detained before in April, released, and then rearrested for voicing views critical of the West and Ukraine’s government. He faced torture while imprisoned, then managed to post bail but decided to flee to Hungary for political asylum. He believed the Ukrainian government was setting him up to be arrested again. He went missing after attempting to cross the Ukrainian-Hungarian border. The situation highlighted concerns about free speech and the treatment of dissenters in Ukraine.

  • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
    7·
    1 year ago

    Straight from the state department briefing last week.

    QUESTION: Thanks, Matt. Liam Cosgrove with The Grayzone. So back in May I asked you about Gonzalo Lira. He was the U.S. citizen arrested in Ukraine for posting dissident content online, and you told me the State Department was aware of his arrest in May. And we learned last night through a series of tweets by him that he had been tortured in the Ukrainian prison and he was now on a motorcycle with a broken rib trying to flee to the Hungarian border. And so I’m wondering, if this is true, given the State Department knew of his arrest and his detention, how has this been allowed to occur? We have a U.S. citizen being – being detained and perhaps tortured in the prison of one of our strongest allies.

    MR MILLER: Well, you lost me with the “perhaps” and the “if this is true.” I think I’d want to verify those reports before I commented on it.

    I guess Yankee citizen lives are only important if they can be used to advance bourgeois geopolitical goals. Don’t worry though, they might invade Ukraine later after the war to make them pay for that transgression and their loss.