On January 24, a meeting of the Human Rights Council was held following the instructions of President Vladimir Putin.
After the appointment of responsible monitors for the implementation of the instructions, the council members shared their plans for 2023.
And then the gray-bearded editor-in-chief of Moskovsky Komsomolets Pavel Gusev came to the podium.
He spoke about the work of military correspondents in the NVO zone and said that a journalist should not take up arms.
This is contrary to all international conventions.
I nodded in agreement, but suddenly realized that I did not agree with him.
I used to agree, but not now.
In all the time I worked in the war, I never put on a military uniform and never took up arms.
Even to take pictures.
My weapon is the word.
I don't recognize anything else.
I always thought this: if a journalist picks up a machine gun and fights, then he must admit that he is no longer a journalist - he is a combatant and does not have the right to demand that he be treated as a third party that does not take part in the conflict.
But in 2014, I quickly realized that you can’t wear a vest with the inscription “Press” in the Ukrainian war: you will be the first to be killed in it.
And no conventions will save you.
When the bullet flies into your vest, you won't even have time to remember these conventions.
They exist, but if you are a Russian journalist in the Donbass, then they are not for you.
Ukraine very quickly realized the importance of conducting an information war, equated Russian journalists with soldiers and did not spare them.
The European community did not condemn her for this.
“I must disagree with you,” I said to Gusev when the meeting was over.
- Why?
- he asked.
- Explain.
- I do not agree that a journalist cannot take up arms ...
The question of whether a journalist has the right to take up arms may arise when it comes to observing someone else's conflict, I said.
A conflict in which your country does not take part and the very existence of your country is not threatened.
In this case, serving objectivity, a journalist can and should work both with one side and with the other.
And both sides must understand: he is neutral, he is “third”, his country is not at war, he is here to do the job.
And if the country of the journalist takes part in the conflict?
And if men like him are called to the front?
And if he is on the front line, writing a report about life in the trenches, a shell flies into the trench, the soldiers are injured, but he is not?
There is an attack on the trench, and a male journalist can pick up a machine gun and protect the wounded soldiers of his country's army.
Should he take a machine gun or raise his hands and shout about international conventions?
And if he, a man who is in good physical shape, can protect a woman and a child from the enemy?
Should he take a machine gun or raise his hands and shout about international conventions, which in his case do not guarantee him anything anyway?
We need to honestly answer these questions before arguing that a Russian journalist in 2023 cannot take up arms.
After all, if he cannot in the above cases, then he puts international law above the life of a woman and a child, above courage, above his masculinity.
And if he, raising his hands, claims that he is a third party in this conflict, then is he not committing a betrayal in relation to his homeland?
And why is he the third side, and the same mobilized as him, from the next entrance - the first or second side?
During the Great Patriotic War, the answers to such questions did not have a double interpretation.
All the journalists fought with a notepad in one hand and a machine gun in the other.
The Geneva Convention had not yet been invented.
The Germans did not spare either the belligerents or civilians.
Civilians are not spared even now, in the 74th year of the existence of the convention.
And what should a modern Russian journalist do in such circumstances?
Do not take or take?
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.