Kyiv journalist feared murdered (09/24/00)

Kyiv journalist feared murdered

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Heorhii Gongadze, a Ukrainian journalist considered to be among the country's brightest and most aggressive, disappeared without a trace on September 16 after leaving his Kyiv office for a planned rendezvous with his family.

The matter has gained national and international attention mostly because Mr. Gongadze was one of the most popular and provocative political journalists among the capital city's correspondents, a journalist who did not fear to overtly and brazingly taunt and criticize the Ukrainian government for limiting press freedoms and intimidating the media.

National Deputy Hryhorii Omelchenko, a former KGB official who often has criticized the Kuchma administration, demanded that Ukrainian law enforcement agencies turn over what information they have gathered to the Verkhovna Rada.

"Gongadze is known for his tough opposition to the current regime of President Leonid Kuchma and his exposes on corruption among high-ranking authorities," said Mr. Omelchenko. "Journalists are being killed and beaten, media outlets are being destroyed, journalists go missing under mysterious circumstances, but law-enforcement bodies pretend that nothing is happening," he underscored.

On September 21 the Verkhovna Rada announced it would form an ad hoc investigative committee to look into the matter of the disappearance of Mr. Gongadze and the law enforcement effort to find him or his abductors.

The previous day Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko announced he would take a personal interest in the matter and asked for daily updates from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The same day the Commonwealth of Independent States said it would cooperate in an international search for the journalist and/or his abductors.

Mr. Gongadze, 31, a Ukrainian citizen born in Georgia whose mother is from Lviv and father is from Tbilisi, was the founder and publisher of Ukrainska Pravda, Ukraine's first Internet newspaper, which describes itself as an "oppositionist" publication. He had spoken often about the pitiful state of Ukraine's press and the government's tight control of information and intimidation of the media. The newspaper regularly wrote about Ukraine's shadowy business and political clans, and often criticized President Leonid Kuchma.

During the summer Mr. Gongadze had complained to friends that he was being followed and harassed by unknown persons. His wife, Myroslava, said city officials had visited his apartment in Lviv, inquiring about how often he stayed there and whether he was registered at that address. In response, Mr. Gongadze had filed a complaint with the Procurator General's Office in Kyiv. Although he had received no response to his letter, the harassment had subsided, explained his wife.

Mr. Gongadze disappeared after he left his office on a rainy Saturday afternoon to hand over a set of keys to his wife, who had locked herself out of their apartment and was waiting for him on the street with their twin 3-year-olds. He never showed.

On September 20 the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced it was handling the matter as a murder investigation, which has quelled hope that Mr. Gongadze, a popular figure among his colleagues, might still be alive. Earlier the investigation had been limited to a missing person search.

The militia currently is pursuing three possibilities that might lead to Mr. Gongadze's disappearance and likely murder: his professional work, business relations or a private relationship with a woman gone sour.

Initially Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs said its investigation had revealed no leads or witnesses to the disappearance. However, at a press conference on September 19 Mr. Gongadze's wife said the militia had informed her that morning that they were investigating a phone call received by the Georgian Embassy in Kyiv the previous day.

On September 18 the third secretary of the Georgian Embassy, Rusudan Dzhincharadze, received an anonymous phone call from a man she described as having "a Caucasian accent" who said that Mr. Gongadze was still alive and being held somewhere in the Moskovskyi raion of the city of Kyiv. The caller, who refused to give his name or the source of his information, added that he was sure the journalist would remain alive through 1 p.m. of the following day. The caller also gave the names of three prominent Ukrainians who he said were somehow involved in the affair.

Although Mrs. Gongadze refused to reveal their names, the following day the Ministry of Internal Affairs released excerpts of the report it received from the Georgian Embassy, which stated that National Deputy Oleksander Volkov, Minister of Internal Affairs Yurii Kravchenko and a prominent Ukrainian mafia boss, nicknamed Kissel, were involved in the matter.

However, neither Mrs. Gongadze, who is a journalist like her husband, nor other leading members of the Kyiv press corps who organized the press conference said they were ready to include the three as suspects in the disappearance of Mr. Gongadze. Yulia Mostova, the editor-in-chief of Ukraine's leading weekly, Dzerkalo Nedeli, explained that she believed the perpetrators of the abduction were more likely to be opponents of the named individuals and that the phone call probably was an attempt to deflect investigation efforts by law enforcement officials.

"I think that law enforcement officials would be better served by turning their attention away from the acquaintances of Volkov and concentrating on the enemies of Volkov," said Ms. Mostova.

Mrs. Gongadze said that those named, who carry extraordinary power in the halls of the Presidential Administration Building, could best salvage their prestige and honor by doing everything possible to find her husband or his abductors and clear their names.

On September 20 during a television interview Mr. Volkov vehemently denied his involvement in the Gongadze matter and said he would do all in his power to find out what happened to the missing journalist.

Mr. Gongadze's friends and colleagues who organized the press conference gathered 82 journalists' signatures on a petition that decries the lack of protection afforded members of the Ukrainian press and criticizes the failure of law enforcement officials to solve four other murders of Ukrainian journalists in the last four years, including the midday shooting of a prominent Odesa editor and the hanging of a journalist who was found in a warehouse in an industrial district of Kyiv.

The petition was given to President Kuchma during an appearance by the president before a conference of Ukraine's regional media. Mr. Kuchma said he would take action to make sure that law enforcement officials do all that is possible to solve the Gongadze case, as well as those of other journalists who have disappeared.

Mr. Gongadze began publishing Ukrainska Pravda in April. In the last months the newspaper had ceaselessly attacked leading political figures in Ukraine, including the alleged puppetmasters of Ukrainian politics and business who have been dubbed "the oligarchs." His newspaper had set aside much space recently to stories on the political maneuvering of such notable politicians as National Deputies Volkov, Hryhorii Surkis, Viktor Pinchuk and Andrii Derkach, First Vice-Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Viktor Medvedchuk and President Kuchma's Chief of Staff Volodymyr Lytvyn, all of whom are considered near the top of political or business hierarchies.

In the paper's most recent issue Mr. Gongadze had commented in an article on Mr. Volkov's refusal to allow the journalist to attend a press conference the lawmaker had organized and questioned Mr. Volkov's commitment to democracy. Mr. Volkov was the chairman of President Kuchma's re-election campaign and is the leader of the Rebirth of the Regions Party. He is also considered Mr. Kuchma's closest political adviser, and some refer to him as "the wizard," as in the classic "Wizard of Oz."

Mr. Gongadze had also reported speculation that Mr. Lytvyn was organizing an effort to neutralize the power of Mr. Medvedchuk, whom many consider a prime candidate to succeed Mr. Kuchma, in order to further his own presidential ambitions.

Mr. Gongadze was always something of a loose cannon during press conferences, his colleagues admitted, but the missing Ukrainian journalist's oppositionist stance hardened in the run-up to the presidential elections last fall. It was then that the various candidates played musical chairs with broadcast media outlets and the capital city's newspapers in order to secure for themselves a strong propaganda base.

Tactics used by President Kuchma's re-election team particularly inflamed Mr. Gongadze. He organized a petition-gathering drive among his colleagues and then flew to Washington with two fellow journalists to publicize what he felt was a badly deteriorating situation for freedom of the press in Ukraine. In Washington and in New York at meetings with congressional staffers and Clinton administration officials, as well as with the Ukrainian diaspora, Mr. Gongadze spoke of the psychological and physical intimidation that journalists face in Ukraine and stressed that it was not an election campaign phenomenon.

He described the dual nature of the control of the press by politicians and the oligarchs to keep journalists in line: the external threat of tax audits of newspapers and broadcast media as well as physical threats to editors and journalists, all of which leads journalists to censor themselves in order to avoid the perceived consequences.

Olena Prytula, who had traveled with Mr. Gongadze to the United States and who would become the editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda four months after the visit, said during a September 19 television interview that, in the end, much of the blame for Mr. Gongadze's disappearance must go to the members of the Ukrainian press.

"Journalists in Ukraine are scared to ask the tough questions, which Heorhii wasn't. Because he refused to be like everyone else he became a problem for somebody," said Ms. Prytula.

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