Journalist Murderer Only Meant To Frighten

Michael Hedges January 30, 2013 - Follow on Twitter

Measuring media freedom is a subjective art. Freedom for one represses another, say critics. Indisputable, though, is death. Where media workers die for their work, mysteriously ordered, we learn that freedom isn’t free.

Tainting the judicial and human rights reputation of Ukraine for more than a decade has been the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze. Four suspects were eventually named, all police officers, and a 2008 trial convicted three, the fourth had gone on the run. Former chief of the Interior Ministry’s surveillance department Oleksiy Pukach was arrested a year later and faced the courts. He was sentenced to life in prison (January 29) for the murder.

Political observers inside and outside Ukraine believe Georgy Gongadze’s murder – strangled, decapitated and body burned – and the lack of enthusiasm for official investigations led to protests against then President Leonid Kuchma culminating in the Orange Revolution, which ended in 2005 with the Ukraine Supreme Court invalidating the election of Kuchma’s hand picked successor Viktor Yanukovych in favor of Viktor Yushchenko. Since then Mr. Yushchenko suffered a mysterious poisoning, his Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko jailed for charges considered politically motivated and Mr. Yanukovych elected President. 

General Pukach, in a statement at sentencing, said he would accept the verdict only if Mr. Kuchma and his former chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn “were here with me,” but he did admit strangling Georgy Gongadze with a belt only to frighten him. Mr. Kuchma had been indicted for involvement in the murder. Secretly made recordings implicating the former president provided by bodyguard and former spy Mykola Melnychenko were disallowed and charges dropped. Mr. Melnychenko also fled, receiving asylum in the United States, but returned to Kyiv recently and was promptly arrested. Now he says there are secret tapes connecting Mrs. Tymoshenko with dastardly deeds.  There’s a movie in all this.

While lawyers for all parties mull appeals, most observers believe the story will simply fade away. Gongadze’s website Ukrayinska Pravda regularly reported on corruption during the Kuchma years and with the spotlight on misdeeds of politicians and shady deals of business leaders Ukraine’s news media remains sub-par according to international media watchers. As Ukraine takes the chair of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara said “promotion of media freedom” will be a key issue.

High profile murders of journalists with awkwardly slow jurisprudence taint other countries. Russian courts finally sentenced in December a former police officer for complicity in the 2006 murder of journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya with further trials to begin this year. The 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul was charged to a 17 year old, who received a 20-year sentence in 2011.

“The masterminds of the killing have not been convicted,” noted a recent Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) report on media freedom. The “State of Media Freedom in Europe,” presented by special rapporteur Mats Johansson and approved in a resolution (January 24), was particularly critical of Turkey, which it said has “more journalists in detention than any other State in the world” imposing a “paralyzing effect on its media environment.”

The Hungarian government has made “significant progress” in reforming media laws and the judiciary, noted Council of Europe (CoE) Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland at a Brussels presser (January 29), though further cooperation “to further improve the legislation” will continue. The CoE report noted "concern" over political pressure on public broadcasters in Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Spain and Ukraine

See also in ftm Knowledge

Press/Media Freedom - Challenges and Concerns

Press and media freedom worldwide is facing challenges from many corners. As authoritarian leaders impose strict control over traditional and new media with impunity, media watchers have concerns for democracy. This ftm Knowledge file accounts the troubles of this difficult decade. 88 pages. PDF (December 2011)

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