FOR THE RECORD: "Requiem 2002" pens open leter to President Bush (09/15/02)

FOR THE RECORD: "Requiem 2002" pens open leter to President Bush

Following is the text of a letter to President George W. Bush initiated by the organizers of the mass action and vigil "Requiem 2002: Face the Truth." The following information was excerpted from the website www.gongadze.org.

The Gongadze Foundation is a non-governmental organization, working to protect journalists' rights, political and intellectual freedoms; provide legal assistance; develop continuing education programs for journalists; and help the families of reporters who have unjustly suffered while performing their professional duties. The Gongadze Foundation was established in 2001. At this point its primary goal is to seek a logical conclusion to the investigation of kidnapping and murder of the Ukrainian journalist Heorhii Gongadze and to create a legal precedent that would prevent further crimes against Ukrainian reporters and political activists. The leader and founder of the Gongadze Foundation is Myroslava Gongadze, Heorhii's widow.

The Forum of Ukrainian Students in America is a non-governmental organization that brings together Ukrainian youth studying in the United States. Established in December 2000, the forum's first initiative was sending an open letter signed by 60 students in America and Europe to Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma, demanding his resignation. The Forum also appealed to Ukraine's students and businessmen urging support for democratic forces during the 2002 parliamentary elections. The forum's goals are: to give students an opportunity to influence social life in Ukraine while studying abroad; to maintain and encourage interest in political, economic and cultural processes in Ukraine through discussion and exchange of information; and to maintain a network of students returning from studying abroad to Ukraine.

(Editor's note: At press time, spokespersons for "Requiem 2002" had not responded to The Weekly's queries about the number of signatories to the open letter.)

Dear Mr. President:

We, a group of American scholars, civic activists and Ukrainian students studying in the U.S., are writing to urge you to support the Ukrainian people in their determination to defend their rights and freedoms, endangered by the country's current regime. We hope that your administration will make it clear to President Leonid Kuchma and other top Ukrainian officials that there can be no progress in U.S.-Ukrainian relations, or in Ukraine's relations with NATO, unless they allow for freedom and democracy to flourish in their country. Ukraine can contribute to peace and stability on the European continent only if its government respects basic democratic values. Therefore, actively promoting the emergence of a truly democratic Ukraine is in U.S. vital national interests.

Today, on September 16, 2002, Ukraine commemorates two years since the disappearance of the independent journalist Heorhii Gongadze. He vanished without a trace after a series of his articles had exposed far-reaching corruption at the highest levels of Ukrainian leadership. Several months later, a former presidential security officer provided recordings that implicate President Kuchma and other top officials in planning the journalist's murder. The government's investigation of the crime instantly turned into a farce, since the primary suspects were also the ones overseeing the investigation.

Gongadze's brutal murder and its aftermath touched every Ukrainian in the same profound way that the terrorist attacks of September 11 affected Americans. However, while the organizers of last year's terror against the U.S. were uncovered and relentlessly pursued, the assault on the rights of free-thinking Ukrainians remains unpunished. After two years of empty promises, cover-up attempts and pure inaction by the Ukrainian authorities, we come to only one conclusion: the perpetrators of Gongadze's murder, as well as of numerous other "accidental" deaths of opposition journalists and politicians, will never be found as long as Ukraine is ruled by a few unaccountable individuals bent on keeping power at all costs. The regime, which denies the people of the second largest country in Europe basic rights and human dignity, is incapable of providing justice. Therefore, we call on you to insist on its fundamental transformation, which would give way to the genuine representatives of the people's choice.

Mr. President, in your speech in Warsaw last year you pledged to reward Ukraine's aspiration to become a European nation. The Ukrainian people all share this goal and resolutely strive to achieve it. However, they still remain separated from the rest of Europe by a wall of brutal, unchecked power exercised for the benefit of the privileged few. This wall of oppression is certainly doomed to fall for, as President Ronald Reagan affirmed while speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, "it cannot withstand faith, it cannot withstand truth, and it cannot withstand freedom." Now is the time for America to act decisively and extend its hand to the people of Ukraine so that we together can tear down this wall!

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