(IPI/IFEX) – In a 20 September 2000 letter to President Leonid Kuchma, IPI stated that it is deeply worried about the fate of Ukrainian editor Hryhoriy Gongadze. According to IPI’s sources, on 16 September, Gongadze failed to return to his home in Kiev, where his wife and children were waiting for him. Gongadze is the […]
(IPI/IFEX) – In a 20 September 2000 letter to President Leonid Kuchma, IPI stated that it is deeply worried about the fate of Ukrainian editor Hryhoriy Gongadze.
According to IPI’s sources, on 16 September, Gongadze failed to return to his home in Kiev, where his wife and children were waiting for him. Gongadze is the editor of the Internet newsletter “Pravda Ukrayiny”. The newsletter has acquired a reputation for being critical of Ukraine’s incumbent government, because of its reports of alleged corruption among senior officials. Gongadze has also expressed similar views in radio programmes on the independent Radio Kontinent.
Prior to his disappearance, Gongadze had complained that police were harassing him and his colleagues about their possible complicity in a murder. Gongadze has denied any involvement in the matter and has accused police of trying to intimidate him.
Aside from the above-mentioned criticisms of the government, “Pravda Ukrayiny” has often reprinted material from a website called “The Agency of Federal Investigations”, a media outlet that has received threats for its reporting on government officials. Among the material recently published both on the website and in “Pravda Ukrayiny” was an article on Oleksandr Volkov, leader of the Vidrodzhenya Rehioniv (Regional Rebirth) parliamentary group.
Oleh Yeltsov, a reporter with the website, claimed that he received threats after the Volkov article was published. Yeltsov said that on 15 September, an unknown person telephoned him at his home and threatened him, demanding that the journalist “shut up and listen.” The unidentified caller said that Yeltsov’s publications “are disturbing some quite influential people.” Yeltsov did not know if the threats were directly related to the Volkov article or other articles published on the website.
Several Ukrainian journalists and lawmakers released a statement commenting on Gongadze’s disappearance: “During the years of Ukrainian independence, not a single high-profile crime against journalists was fully resolved”, the statement read. “The lack of results … gives us grounds to state that nobody is interested in the fate of our colleagues except for journalists”. These views seem to correspond with the past history of attacks against the Ukrainian press.
While acknowledging that President Kuchma has expressed his concern and ordered that police pay special attention to Gongadze’s disappearance, IPI noted that the case is especially troubling when placed in the context of recent attacks against the media in Ukraine.
On 14 August, Valentina Vasilchenko, a freelance journalist from the city of Cherkassy, was assaulted in the stairwell of her apartment building. The beating is believed to be connected to a series of articles on police corruption that she published in the local independent weekly “Antenna” (see IFEX alert of 22 August 2000).
On 31 March, Oleg Liachko, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper “Svoboda”, was beaten by a public official for refusing to reveal his sources. The official had been mentioned in Liachko’s articles on links between Ukrainian politicians, state security agencies and local criminal organisations (see IFEX alerts of 14 and 7 April 2000). In addition, several newspapers have been fined by the authorities and libel laws have been used to effectively shut down investigative reporting and silence criticism (see IFEX alerts of 15 May and 25 April 2000).
These are merely a few incidents among many that have created a climate in which physical attacks and threats are used to prevent unwanted reporting.
Recommended Action
Send appeals to the president:
– expressing the view that attacks on the press (such as the afore-mentioned ones) are in direct violation of everyone’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”, as guaranteed by Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
– urging His Excellency to take appropriate action to ensure a full and swift investigation into Gongadze’s disappearance
– further urging His Excellency to take the necessary measures to guarantee the safety of journalists reporting on developments in Ukraine
Appeals To
APPEALS TO:
H.E. Leonid Kuchma
President
11 Bankova St.
Office of the President
252005
Kiev, Ukraine
Fax: + 38 044 293 1001
Please copy appeals to the source if possible.
