(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Ukrainian Prime Minister Anatoly Kinah, RSF expressed outrage over the 3 July 2001 attack on Igor Alexandrov, director-general of the TOR television station, in Slaviansk (in the country’s east). “This journalist, who was previously wrongly sentenced by the Ukrainian justice system, and who had brought his case before the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Ukrainian Prime Minister Anatoly Kinah, RSF expressed outrage over the 3 July 2001 attack on Igor Alexandrov, director-general of the TOR television station, in Slaviansk (in the country’s east).
“This journalist, who was previously wrongly sentenced by the Ukrainian justice system, and who had brought his case before the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR], is teetering between life and death today,” stated RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “If the Ministry of the Interior and the Public Prosecutor’s Office do all that is necessary to identify Igor Alexandrov’s attackers, the inquiry would undoubtedly produce results. We ask that you personally intervene so that the two departments take the decision to fight violence against the press in Ukraine, which has reached a level unparalleled anywhere in Europe,” added Ménard.
According to information collected by RSF, Alexandrov, director-general of the TOR television station in Slaviansk (Donetsk region, in the country’s east), was attacked by unidentified persons on 3 July, in the morning, at the entrance to the building which houses the television station. His assailants hit him on the head with baseball bats. Hospitalised with a serious cranial traumatism, Alexandrov remains in a coma. The doctors are not sure of his chances to survive.
In 1998, Alexandrov was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with no parole, and barred from practicing his professional activities for five years, following a complaint filed by Member of Parliament (MP) Olexandre Lechtchynsky, whom the journalist had described as “ruler of the kingdom of Donbass vodka” (Donbass is an industrial zone in Ukraine’s east) (see IFEX alert of 31 July 1998). In 2000, following the withdrawal of the MP’s compaint, the case was closed. However, Alexandrov had asked the Ukrainian courts to annul the original verdict, recognise the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s error and responsibility, and grant compensation for moral damages. He also brought his case before the ECHR in Strasbourg.
RSF also asked to be kept informed of developments in the investigation into the murder of Oleg Breus, publisher of the newspaper “XXI vek” (XXI century) of Lugansk. Breus was shot and killed outside his home on 24 June (see IFEX alert of 29 June 2001). The army believes that the murder was a settling of accounts linked to the publisher’s business interests. Breus also owned thirty-three percent of shares in the city’s trading centre. But according to the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Yuriy Yurov, the murder could be linked to critical articles published in “XXI vek” against new city hall authorities, following the recent resignation of Lugansk’s mayor.
