KIEV, Sept. 18 – President Viktor Yanukovych’s Regions Party started a push on Tuesday to approve legislation that would slap journalists with up to three-year jail sentences for disseminating ‘libelous’ information about politicians.

The bill, seen as an open attack against the freedom of speech, was approved in the first reading on Tuesday and will have to be approved in the second reading before it can be signed by Yanukovych into law.

The bill may further strain relations between Ukraine and the West, which have been already seriously damaged by persecution of opposition leaders.

“Viktor Yanukovych has gone to war with journalists,” Serhiy Leshchenko, an investigative reporter at Ukrayinska Pravda online newspaper, said. “After cleansing opposition groups from political field, the Regions Party has focused on neutralizing a new dangerous group – the journalists.”

The development comes two weeks after top Ukrainian journalists interrupted Yanukovych’s speech on press rights, protesting increasing media censorship by the authorities.

About a dozen reporters rose from their seats and held up posters reading “Stop Censorship” and “Media Oligarchs Serve the Authorities.” Security guards violently ripped them out of the hands of some protesters.

The bill, which was submitted by Vitaliy Zhuravskiy, a member of the Regions Party, seeks to re-introduce the libel clause in the legislation that had been removed in 2001 for the sake of media freedom. The bill was also backed by the Communist Party and the group led by Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn.

The developments come two weeks after Ukraine hosted the annual World Newspaper Congress, a meeting of dozens of news executives from around the world. The congress complained of waning press freedoms in Ukraine.

Since Yanukovych’s election, opposition parties have had little access to television, with the majority of TV channels controlled by magnates loyal to the government, reporters complain of being denied access to crucial information, and a rising number of attacks on journalists are left unpunished.

Mykola Tomenko, a deputy speaker of Parliament and a member of the opposition Batkivshchyna party, said the legislation may lead to a situation when many journalists may end up in jail.

“If this legislation is approved, I think that a third of journalists will be put in jails,” Tomenko said.

“This is the death of the Ukrainian journalism,” Batkivshchyna said in a statement. “President Yanukovych, with his paranoid fear and thirst for power, will be responsible.”

Olena Bondarenko, a member of the Regions Party, said the legislation was needed because media has been used by “different business and political groups as a tool for influence and for battle.”

She argued that approval of the legislation before the October 28 parliamentary elections would show that the Regions Party was not afraid to take the issue to voters.

“There should be no hypocrisy,” Bondarenko said. “Should we wait until after the elections and try to be so nice until then, and to act after the election? No. We want people to vote for us just as we are.” (tl/ez)