just give money to good journalists
11/21/2003 | peter byrne
Open Letter
TO: Aidan White
General Secretary
International Federation of Journalists
2003-11-20
Dear Mr. White,
I was surprised to hear that the IFJ decided to support another inquiry on the handling of Gongadze’s abduction and murder.
Reasonable minds may differ, but it appears patently obvious that police officers, acting on oral orders from top government officials, including President Leonid Kuchma, are involved if not directly responsible.
It is also painfully clear that the European Union, the U.S. government and Russian Federation are not eager to acknowledge their complicity in fanning the scandal and, alternatively, squelching it.
The comparison between violations of law and criminal acts suggested in recordings made in Kuchma’s office and the actual happenings in Ukraine does not explain why there is little mention here or abroad about other crimes committed.
Some victims remain alive, such as Borys Feldman, the banker detained in March 2000 on trumped up charges invented by Kuchma and then State Tax Chief Mykola Azarov (Svyatoslav Pyskun was then in charge of the agency’s investigative bureau). Hours of recorded – and authen-ticated – recording transcripts attest to this.
While past inquiries and reports about the Gongadze case disseminated by IFJ Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, CPJ, et cetera have drawn international attention to the Ukraine’s miserable state of affairs, they certainly have not inspired innovative approaches to resuscitating independent journalism in or about Ukraine.
Re-hashing hashed hash in another inquiry looks like a waste of time and money. If you or the people you claim to represent want to help, I recommend that you do something concrete for independent journalists in Ukraine.
One idea is to give them money.
Also, all this crap about analyzing breakdowns in Ukraine’s legal system and judiciary is tedious. Jurisprudence, as such, does not exist here. The laws are ridiculous, so are the clowns who call themselves prosecutors, judges and rapporteurs.
Peter Byrne
“Mutilation of the Truth: Inquiry into the murder of journalist Gongadze” – January 2001
Reporters Without Borders
“Letter to Deputy Oleksandr Lavrynovych” – February 2001
International Press Institute
“Working Against Impunity – A Review of the Gongadze Case” – sometime in 2004
International Federation of Journalists
“Negotiating the News: Informal State Censorship of Ukrainian Television” – March 2003
Human Rights Watch
“Unity for Justice – The Challenge of Change in Journalism in Ukraine” – April 2003
International Federation of Journalists
“Under Assault – Ukraine’s News Media and the 2004 Presidential Elections” –
October 2003
Freedom House Special Report
TO: Aidan White
General Secretary
International Federation of Journalists
2003-11-20
Dear Mr. White,
I was surprised to hear that the IFJ decided to support another inquiry on the handling of Gongadze’s abduction and murder.
Reasonable minds may differ, but it appears patently obvious that police officers, acting on oral orders from top government officials, including President Leonid Kuchma, are involved if not directly responsible.
It is also painfully clear that the European Union, the U.S. government and Russian Federation are not eager to acknowledge their complicity in fanning the scandal and, alternatively, squelching it.
The comparison between violations of law and criminal acts suggested in recordings made in Kuchma’s office and the actual happenings in Ukraine does not explain why there is little mention here or abroad about other crimes committed.
Some victims remain alive, such as Borys Feldman, the banker detained in March 2000 on trumped up charges invented by Kuchma and then State Tax Chief Mykola Azarov (Svyatoslav Pyskun was then in charge of the agency’s investigative bureau). Hours of recorded – and authen-ticated – recording transcripts attest to this.
While past inquiries and reports about the Gongadze case disseminated by IFJ Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, CPJ, et cetera have drawn international attention to the Ukraine’s miserable state of affairs, they certainly have not inspired innovative approaches to resuscitating independent journalism in or about Ukraine.
Re-hashing hashed hash in another inquiry looks like a waste of time and money. If you or the people you claim to represent want to help, I recommend that you do something concrete for independent journalists in Ukraine.
One idea is to give them money.
Also, all this crap about analyzing breakdowns in Ukraine’s legal system and judiciary is tedious. Jurisprudence, as such, does not exist here. The laws are ridiculous, so are the clowns who call themselves prosecutors, judges and rapporteurs.
Peter Byrne
“Mutilation of the Truth: Inquiry into the murder of journalist Gongadze” – January 2001
Reporters Without Borders
“Letter to Deputy Oleksandr Lavrynovych” – February 2001
International Press Institute
“Working Against Impunity – A Review of the Gongadze Case” – sometime in 2004
International Federation of Journalists
“Negotiating the News: Informal State Censorship of Ukrainian Television” – March 2003
Human Rights Watch
“Unity for Justice – The Challenge of Change in Journalism in Ukraine” – April 2003
International Federation of Journalists
“Under Assault – Ukraine’s News Media and the 2004 Presidential Elections” –
October 2003
Freedom House Special Report
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2003.11.21 | peter byrne
maybe i'm just making this all up?
At the time of Gongadze's disappearance in September 2000, police attempted to show they were serious about finding the prickly journalist, releasing statistics detailing how many buildings they had searched, how many mailboxes they had scoured and how many people they had interviewed.A headless corpse was found in a forest near the tiny village of Tarashcha in November 2000 as details about the investigation began trickling out from the Prosecutor General's Office, the Interior Ministry and local law enforcement agencies.
Gongadze's body was discovered by a villager on Nov. 2, 2000. It was taken to the local morgue by petty criminals on a work detail, and remained in an un-refrigerated shack for two weeks. It wasn't until Gongadze's colleagues heard about the body and made arrangements to take custody of it that authorities in Kyiv announced the discovery.
The body was then reported stolen from the Tarashcha morgue. Later, it turned up in the Interior Ministry's morgue in Kyiv.
Former Prosecutor General Mykailo Potebenko told parliament in January 2001 that there was a 99.6 percent chance the body was Gongadze's. U.S. forensics experts came to the same conclusion two months later.
On Sept. 18, 2000, an anonymous caller to the Georgian Embassy in Kyiv said that Volodymyr Kisel, a deputy in Kyiv’s Holosiyivsky regional council and a reputed crime figure, along with parliament deputy Oleksandr Volkov and then-Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko, arranged Gongadze’s abduction.
Articles authored by independent journalist Oleh Yeltsov in early 2001 directed attention to Lieutenant General Oleskiy Pukach, the former chief of the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, by claiming that agents of the police trailed Gongadze in July 2000, months before he vanished.
Yeltsov told the Post that his primary source for the information was Ihor Honcharov, a retired police officer, who was arrested in May 2002 for allegedly masterminding more than a dozen contract killings committed by corrupt policemen working with criminal gangs. Honcharov died unexpectedly in police custody on Aug. 1 and his remains were cremated days later.
Radio Kontinent General Director Serhy Sholokh, Gongadze’s former boss, told the Post in July 2000 that a colonel from the Interior Ministry interviewed him on July 10, 2000 about whether it was possible that Gongadze could or would associate himself with armed insurrection groups.
Kyiv’s Court of Appeals on Nov. 5 ordered the release of Pukach, the former chief of the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigations Bureau. Prosecutors detained Pukach on Oct. 22 in connection with their investigation into Gongadze’s disappearance.
Sholokh, meanwhile, told Ukrainska Pravda that he positively identified Puchach’s deputy, Colonel Volodymr Bernak, as the individual who interviewed him. He identified Bernak at a line-up recently arranged by the Prosecutor General’s office.
General Prosecutor Svyatoslav Pyskun was sacked on Oct. 28 after holding a press conference during which he attempted to clarify comments made by the GPO to the effect that Pukach was detained in connection with the Gongadze investigation.
2003.11.21 | chytach
How did they know whose corpse it is? (+)
"It wasn't until Gongadze's colleagues heard about the body and madearrangements to take custody of it that authorities in Kyiv announced
the discovery."
Did you ever think of that?