(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has called on the Ukrainian government to thoroughly investigate the cause of a road accident on 14 July 2003 in which newspaper and television editor Vladimir Efremov, a critic of President Leonid Kuchma, was killed. Efremov, a correspondent for the press freedom organisation Institute of Mass Information (IMI) in the city of […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has called on the Ukrainian government to thoroughly investigate the cause of a road accident on 14 July 2003 in which newspaper and television editor Vladimir Efremov, a critic of President Leonid Kuchma, was killed.
Efremov, a correspondent for the press freedom organisation Institute of Mass Information (IMI) in the city of Dniepropetrovsk, was editor of the newspapers “Sobor” and “Dniepropetrovsk” and founder of the regional television station TV 11, which backs former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, a Kuchma opponent. He had agreed to testify at Lazarenko’s 18 August trial in the United States, on charges of “embezzlement of public funds”.
RSF called on Interior Minister Yuri Smirnov to establish the cause of the crash, in which Efremov’s car collided with a truck near the eastern town of Verkhnyodniprovsk. The organisation asked that the car be carefully examined. The Interior Ministry’s local representative, Andriy Zinchuk, has been named to head the investigation.
On 13 October 2001, in the government newspaper “Golos Ukrainy”, Efremov had said he feared he would be killed because of his journalistic activities, probably in a staged road accident.
The authorities seized TV 11’s transmitters on 17 March 1999. They had closed the station on 9 March for supposed “technical reasons”, although the station’s broadcasting licence was valid until 2001 (see IFEX alert of 19 March 1999). Efremov was arrested on 13 January 1999 and jailed for two days in Dniepropetrovsk for alleged irregularities in a 1995 loan agreement involving “Sobor” (see IFEX alert of 15 January 1999). He said he had fully repaid the loan and speculated that he was arrested because TV 11 had broadcast a New Year’s message from Lazarenko instead of the message from Kuchma, which all other stations had broadcast.
