EU Sanctions Reporter And His Wife For Anti-War Reporting.

The EU's Abuse Of Sanctions Power Is Out Of Control.

In May of last year, the EU slapped sanctions on German journalist Hüseyin Doğru and his media outlet Red Media as retribution for his reporting on Germany’s repression of pro-Palestine protestors and critical reporting on EU foreign policy.

The EU accused Doğru of attempting to “undermine or threaten stability and security in the [European] Union” through supposedly supporting “violent demonstrations” and “systematically spreading false information”.

Jacobin magazine noted that, “The allegedly ‘violent’ demonstration refers to the occupation of Humboldt University in Berlin by pro-Palestinian activists in 2024. Because Doğru reported on the occupation on his website, he is said to have created a platform for the ‘rioters’ to spread the ideology”.

The “evidence” used by the EU to back up the claim that Doğru and Red Media were “spreading false information” was entirely made up of legitimate criticism of EU foreign and domestic policy, including criticism of German censorship of pro-Palestine protests, opposition to the Ukraine proxy war , criticism of NATO , reports on protests in the UK and reporting on German police abuse of pro-Palestine protests.

The EU also accused Doğru and Red Media of “close financial and organisational connections with Russian state propaganda entities and actors, and shares deep structural ties, including interlinkages between, and rotation of, individual personnel with Russian state media organisations”.

To back up this claim, the EU cites a Zionist hit piece in a German outlet - which had previously “ published genocide denying features and justifications for the systematic murder of Palestinian journalists”- accusing the outlet of having connections to Russia, which offers no evidence to back this up and relies on guilt by association , such as the fact that Doğru previously worked for the anti-war outlet Redfish, which worked with the network Ruptly, which was connected to the Russian outlet RT, a network that respected Western journalists such as Larry King and Chris Hedges worked for at the time.

A previous article in the German newspaper “Tagesspiegel” made the same allegation- again without a shred of evidence and again basing the claims entirely on the fact that Doğru previously worked with redfish.

The evidence-free report was then cited by the U.S. Secretary of State , to claim that “RT covertly runs the Berlin-based English language platform ‘Red’”, laying the groundwork for the EU sanctions.

In other words, Hüseyin Doğru and Red media were hit with EU sanctions simply because they covered a protest and were critical of EU politicians.

Jacobin noted that because of sanctions, “he has had no access to his accounts and is not allowed to travel,” adding that, “The German Bundesbank, which is in charge of enforcing sanctions, granted him an exemption to withdraw a minimum subsistence allowance of €506 a month from his bank account. And even this tiny sum was temporarily blocked by his bank. ‘I can’t feed my newborn babies,’ says Doğru. ‘On an existential level, you’re reduced to zero.’”

Furthermore, Red “ceased operations due to the sanctions.”

As if this wasn’t Orwellian enough, Germany- as part of the EU sanctions- has now frozen the bank account of Hüseyin Doğru’s wife, claiming that her “accounts were used to circumvent the sanctions imposed against Doğru”, because she took out a new car insurance policy for their shared car after the sanctions made Doğru lose his insurance.

Dorgu said, “The federal government and its institutions have systematically selected us as a target: first me, then my wife, and now our toddlers and infants are affected. This decision deliberately endangers the welfare and health of our children”.

He added, “My children are now in a humanitarian emergency situation.
My wife has been placed in a de facto sanctioned position despite not being sanctioned herself. We cannot receive money. We cannot pay rent. We cannot buy food. We are facing now homeless because we are as of now literally not allowed to pay rent”.

The sadistic campaign against Hüseyin Doğru is part of a broader campaign by the EU to use sanctions on Russia as a cover to crack down on anti-war voices.

In December of last year, the EU put sanctions on the former Swiss army colonel Jacques Baud, accusing him of being “a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda” and repeating “conspiracy theories”.

This is in reference to his factual and well researched reporting on the proxy war in Ukraine .

Baud even “always refused invitations from official Russian media, because I wanted to prevent my analysis from being exploited for propaganda purposes” and was still hit by sanctions, simply for factual analysis of the Ukraine proxy war that did not fit with the EU narrative.

The Wall Street Journal noted that Baud is “a private citizen who wrote books and gave interviews critical of Western policy on Ukraine,” adding, “For that, the bloc has restricted his travel across its 27 countries and frozen all of his ‘funds and economic resources’ in the EU, effectively prohibiting him from doing business there. All without a trial.”

From Hüseyin Doğru to Jacques Baud, it is clear that the EU is attempting to ruin the lives of journalists who speak out on the EU’s complicity in the Gaza genocide or their role in the proxy war in Ukraine in order to intimidate and silence anti-war critics.

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