Four years later, Gongadze case remains unsolved, CPJ expresses dismay (09/26/04)

Four years later, Gongadze case remains unsolved, CPJ expresses dismay

NEW YORK - Four years after the disappearance and death of Ukrainian journalist Heorhii Gongadze, the Committee to Protect Journalists is dismayed by the lack of progress in the government's inquiry into the case. CPJ also remains concerned that journalists are being harassed in the run-up to the October elections, noted a news release from the organization.

"It is reprehensible that President Leonid Kuchma's government continues to obstruct the official inquiry into Gongadze's death," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. "That, combined with the ongoing harassment of the media designed to stifle coverage before next month's poll, only makes the press freedom situation in Ukraine more dire."

Mr. Gongadze was editor of the Internet news site Ukrainska Pravda, which often reported on alleged high-level government corruption. He disappeared on September 16, 2000, after several weeks of harassment by police officials. In early November 2000 a headless corpse believed to be his body was discovered in a forest outside the capital, Kyiv.

Several weeks later, an opposition leader released tapes that a former bodyguard of President Kuchma had recorded. The tapes implicated the Kuchma government in Gongadze's disappearance and caused a major nationwide political crisis that led to numerous protest demonstrations against the government. But on September 10 the Justice Ministry announced that the tapes had been analyzed and were determined to be manipulated and inauthentic.

Sergey Tran, director of the Kyiv-based non-governmental press watchdog Institute for Mass Information, told CPJ, "It is interesting to note that independent experts in a number of Western countries, including the United States, have conducted open examinations of the tapes and pronounced them authentic, and the Ukrainian Justice Ministry claims they are doctored." He continued, "We demand a new, and open, examination of the tapes."

While some 250 journalists and opposition activists gathered on September 16 at a memorial for the slain journalist near Kyiv, Ukraine's ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs claim that the investigation has produced no answers about who ordered and executed Gongadze's murder.

First Vice Minister of Internal Affairs Mikhail Kornienko told journalists at a press conference on September 16 that the Internal Affairs Ministry cannot determine whether Mr. Gongadze was under surveillance at the time of his disappearance because in 2001 the ministry destroyed documents that could have provided clues because their archival expiration date had passed, the independent newspaper Ukrainski Novyny reported.

Harassment of media

Independent media are facing serious harassment as they try to report on the run-up to presidential elections, scheduled for October 31. On September 13 broadcasts of the independent television Channel 5 were suspended in Kharkiv, the country's second largest city, according to local reports. Channel 5 (Kanal) was scheduled to broadcast a two-part, independent journalistic investigation on Gongadze's disappearance and death starting on September 16 the independent website Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Workers at the cable network Alphatelecommunications, which carries Channel 5 told channel staffers privately that government authorities pressured them to cut the channel's broadcasts, according to a staff member at Channel 5.

Cable carriers in several other cities have also suspended Channel 5's broadcasts during the last three months, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Channel 5 is the only major television channel not controlled by the government or pro-government oligarchs, the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

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