LETTER TO THE EDITOR (06/23/02)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Patriotism does not equal unqualified support for Kuchma

Dear Editor:

It might be worth once again recalling the recent past and the murder of Heorhii Gongadze, since some in the community seem to have forgotten this event. A young independent journalist, Mr. Gongadze, who often wrote about corruption at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government, disappeared in Kyiv in September 2000. In November his headless corpse was found in a village outside of Kyiv. In December, the head of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, Oleksander Moroz, revealed the "Melnychenko tapes" where the president of Ukraine is heard telling the head of the Internal Affairs Ministry to get rid of "that Georgian" Gongadze.

Protests break out in Ukraine, force is used in Kyiv to scatter anti-presidential demonstrators. The image of Ukraine is once again sullied. Editorials in most Western newspapers condemn this latest act of lawlessness in Ukraine. The Council of Europe threatens to expel Ukraine.

It is now June 2002. The National Endowment for Democracy arranges for the showing of the BBC film "Killing the Story" in the Congress of the United States. The NED asks the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) and the Ukrainian American Coordinating Council (UACC) to co-sponsor the showing. The film is a recently made documentary by the BBC about the Gongadze murder. Both community organizations refuse to do so.

The UCCA representative in Washington motivates his refusal by stating that there is a segment in the film where one of the people interviewed states that Ukraine is not a safe country for investments. The UCCA representative believes that direct foreign investments are needed in order for Ukraine to revive itself, and therefore will not co-sponsor the showing.

The UACC leadership, while privately critical of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and supportive of the efforts to help find the killers of Mr. Gongadze and bring them to trial, refuse to co-sponsor on the grounds that their membership is against this.

Having been away from the United States and the Ukrainian American community for more then a decade, I was both shocked and dismayed by these decisions. Then, as I spoke to friends who are active in the community, I learned from them that, indeed, the community is undergoing a trauma at the terrible image Ukraine has gotten in the United States. Many people in the community are supporting Mr. Kuchma, for they honestly believe that he is doing a fine job in protecting Ukraine from potential Russian aggression. Any activity aimed against Mr. Kuchma is seen as next to treasonous.

There are also many in the community who see Mr. Kuchma as a crook, but are unwilling to come out publicly and criticize him for fear of being seen as part of the conspiracy to smear Ukraine.

I find this behavior to be foolhardy and dangerous, as well as dishonest. Ukraine's image has suffered very badly in the past seven years not because of the messenger, in this case the media, but because of the criminalized nature of power in Ukraine. The media did not create Pavlo Lazarenko, Yukhym Zviahiskyi, Ihor Bakai, the numerous illegal arms salesmen and others who have, and some still are, committing grave crimes. The media did not kill Mr. Gongadze - he was killed by real men who took orders from other real men. He was killed not in order to blacken Ukraine's image in the American Midwest, but to allow very evil rich gangsters to continue getting richer. Mr. Lazarenko is in a jail cell in San Francisco not because the U.S. Department of Justice wanted to smear Ukraine's image, but because he was indicted for breaking the law. I suspect that most reasonable people will agree with this.

The men caught smuggling arms from Ukraine to African countries embargoed by the United Nations are sitting in jail cells in Italy not because the Anti-Mafia Section of the Italian Prosecutor's Office, the DIA, "hates" Ukraine or Ukrainians. It is because they are sworn to uphold the law and lock up men who are responsible for the wholesale slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

I think it is time for the Ukrainian American community to learn a few basic lessons on what is true patriotism as opposed to being apologetic mutes in the name of a greater good. They can learn much from the Cuban American community.

I do not think there is one Cuban living in the United States who wants to see Cuba lose its independence. I also know of very few pro-Castro Cubans in the U.S. The Cuban community is not obsessed by Cuba's image in the press, and yet they still are anti-Castro. To be a Cuban patriot means to be anti-Castro - to get him out of power so that Cuba can finally flourish and become a normal member of the community of nations.

Yet, for some distorted reasoning, Ukrainian Americans are convinced that patriotism is synonymous with supporting Mr. Kuchma and the present regime in Kyiv.

Sure, one can argue that Mr. Castro is much worse than Mr. Kuchma, although we should not forget that a few years ago Mr. Kuchma did award Mr. Castro a high state award of Ukraine for his "humanism." Tell that to your Cuban neighbors and watch Ukraine's reputation slide further into the mud.

Recently, the presidents of Ukraine and Russia met in St. Petersburg, where the Ukrainian president turned over partial control of gas pipelines in Ukraine to Russia. Earlier, President Kuchma sold the Odesa Oil Refinery to Russia (to Lukoil) then the Kherson oil refinery to Kazakhstan. Is he being pressured by the Russians to do this? And while these are not the worst examples on record, they do show a tendency to deal with the country and its assets as if they were his private piece of real estate - to sell or lease to whomever he wants. Is the Ukrainian American community pleased with these trends?

The bottom line is that the community is both scared and confused by the events taking place in Ukraine. Ukraine is often being held to higher standards by the U.S. government than Russia and there has been a powerful pro-Russian Talbottite camp in Washington for years. But these are not excuses for being water carriers for the Kuchma regime. One can and should be forceful in lobbying Ukrainian interests in Washington, at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of being seen as an agent of the current regime.

How many more Gongadze's have to be killed before the Ukrainian American community comes to realize that something is terribly wrong in Ukraine?

Roman Kupchinsky
Prague, Czech Republic

The writer is editor of RFE/RL Crime and Corruption Watch.

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