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Gyorgy Gongadze - answers still wanted
DATELINE: 15/9/10
Campaigners in the UK will mark the tenth anniversary of the abduction and be-heading of Ukrainian internet journalist Gyorgy Gongadze this week by demanding answers about the investigation into his death. A delegation from the National Union of Journalists will visit the Ukrainian embassy at 60 Holland Park, London, W11 3SJ, at 11.00am on Thursday 16 September.
The NUJ has been at the forefront of the international campaign to bring the instigators of Gongadze's murder to justice, and supported the founding of an independent trade union for Ukrainian media workers. The importance of the campaign to bring those who ordered Gongadze's killing to justice was grimly underlined in recent weeks by the disappearance, and feared murder, of investigative reporter Vasily Klimentyev in Kharkov, Ukraine, on 11 August.Simon Pirani, and NUJ activist who specialises in covering the former Soviet Union, said: "The Gongadze case is a classic example of the impunity of powerful people who instigate violence against journalists.
"The instigators of Gongadze's murder were at the very top of the Ukrainian political pyramid. Former president Leonid Kuchma, current parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn and some of their cronies discussed harming him – shortly before he was kidnapped, beaten, strangled and beheaded by a gang of policemen.
"The gang leader, Aleksei Pukach, is now awaiting trial, and three of his accomplices are serving prison sentences – but the instigators of the crime have never been brought to justice.
"The conversations in Kuchma's office about harming Gongadze are known to the world, because Mykola Melnychenko, a former presidential bodyguard, released tape recordings of them two months after the murder."
In the last few days it has been reported that chief suspect Pukach claims he was ordered by internal affairs minister Yuri Kravchenko to kill Gongadze. Kravchenko is alleged to have shot himself - twice - in March 2005.
Simon said: "This information raises more questions than it answers. Can it credibly be claimed that no-one else within the internal affairs ministry was involved? What relationship did the Gongadze case bear to other illegal activities by groups within the internal affairs ministry at the time?
"On whose authority and with whose knowledge did Kravchenko give such orders? Does this information not necessitate a re-examination of the extremely strange circumstances of Kravchenko's own death?"
In the ten years since Gongadze's murder, Ukrainian media has grown to operate relatively freely – particularly on the internet, where Ukrainska Pravda, the site he founded, is leader among many high-quality news sites. Even TV has a greater variety of reporting than in Russia.
But the disappearance nearly three weeks ago of Vasily Klimentyev, 67, editor of Novy Stil (New Style), a muckraking local paper in Kharkov, is a sober reminder of the dangers facing journalists who try to expose corruption in high places.
The International Federation of Journalists, the Gongadze Foundation, the Institute of Mass Information and the NUJ have produced four reports on the Gongadze case, which can be downloaded here: http://www.ifj.org/en/articles/joint-statement-on-ninth-anniversary-of-gyorgy-gongadze-s-death
Last modified: Wednesday, September 15, 2010
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Notices
Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
CPBF Annual General Meeting
DATELINE: 1/3/13
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Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
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DATELINE: 26/3/10
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Previous stories
International
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