Taking a brief escape to this heartland of the old Soviet Union, I find myself more inspired by the people’s striving for liberty here than by the petty nastiness of the American presidential campaign.
For over a year, Republican candidates and tea party activists have been emoting about the doom that awaits if the president is re-elected, as if four more years of Barack Obama is a dire threat to our freedom.
If you want to see a genuine threat to freedom, come to Kyiv.
Two decades after Ukraine escaped from the suffocating embrace of Russia and eight years after the 2004 Orange Revolution promised a truly democratic society, the country is slipping back into the Russian orbit and the government of President Viktor Yanukovych is undermining the independent media that bravely call him to account.
As in Russia, rich businessmen – many allied with Yanukovych – are building monopolies in all sectors of the economy, including the media. As these “oligarchs” gain control of major media outlets, they stifle aggressive, critical reporting and leave little of the advertising market for independent newspapers, magazines and broadcasters.
Responding to sharp criticism from Europe and the U.S., Yanukovych insists he supports free speech and a robust, free media, but his actions tell a different story. Currently, his government is trying to get a law through parliament that would make it a crime for journalists to defame government officials and politicians. With the definition of defamation in the hands of the government, this would stop all but the most courageous journalists from investigating and reporting on corruption and abuse of power among government leaders.
I am here as a guest of the U.S. State Department. Every day for a week, I have been talking to groups of students, journalists, artists, librarians and others. I tell them about my work at the Los Angeles Times. I show them my cartoons. I teach kids how to draw caricatures and share with university students how I got my start in journalism. The underlying theme in every presentation is that the cornerstone of my career is the United States Constitution.
Several times I have been asked if I am ever censored or get in trouble for the brash opinions I publish day after day. I answer no, I have not been censored, sanctioned or made to suffer for my exercise of free speech because, in the United States, the law is on my side. The First Amendment is stronger than any government.
I have met many bright-eyed, enthusiastic students who want to be journalists. I have met teachers and reporters who are intent on keeping liberty alive in this country. I have also talked with a cartoonist, a librarian and several others who look wistful and defeated. They fear that a great opportunity was squandered when the Orange Revolution became mired in incompetence and finally ceded power to men who take Russia’s Vladimir Putin as their role model.
It seems presumptuous of me to tell these people to keep up the struggle. My freedoms were won for me by Americans of past generations. I have never had to take any risk greater than opening myself up to rude comments from readers. But, I tell them anyway: don’t give up; you still have a chance to turn this around. I hope I am right.
The younger generation of Ukrainians reminds me of my children and their friends. They speak English. Some have studied in the U.S. If they walked down a street in any American town, they would blend in easily. On weekends and in the evenings, they gather in Independence Square under a tall column at whose top stands a huge female figure clothed like a Greek goddess and trimmed in gold. She is the symbol of free Ukraine.
At the far end of the square is a McDonald’s restaurant. I stood on the steps there one night, watching the young Ukrainians, admiring their energy and innocence.
Across the street, a massive modern building loomed. Across its face was a huge video screen. It played the same campaign ad over and over – Ukraine’s parliamentary elections are a month away.
The towering face of Yanukovych lit up the night again and again; Ukraine’s strong man asking for votes, asking to be entrusted with these young people’s future.
Yanukovych: A modern-day tyrant
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is the model of a new kind of power-grabbing authoritarian. Gone is the preening, bullying fascist in a comical military costume, like Hitler or Mussolini. Mao’s jacket and Castro’s combat fatigues are out of fashion. Today, it is all business. Today, Stalin would be wearing Hugo Boss or Brooks Brothers, his mustache would be shaved off and he, like Yanukovych, would look like any CEO flying business class.
The pogrom and the putsch have given way to PR. Yanukovych has hired lobbyists and public relations teams to help him project a progressive image while he quietly squeezes the press and re-jiggers election laws to guarantee his party permanent rule.
An example of this is the Podesta Group’s $200,000 contract with an entity called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Podesta Group is an American lobbying firm run by Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, John Podesta. And the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine? That just happens to be an operation controlled by Yanukovych, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
When he is in Washington or Paris or London or Berlin, Yanukovych talks as if he is a champion of a free press, as he knows he needs to if he wants to be welcomed into the club of prosperous democracies. But a libel and defamation law favored by his party in parliament would threaten journalists with prison terms, fines and ruined careers.
The good news is that protests in the Ukrainian media and diplomatic pressure from the United States and Europe have gotten Yanukovych to put the defamation law on ice. The not so good reality is that, like a cancer in temporary remission, the legislation could easily come back after parliamentary elections are over at the end of October.
In recent days, Ukraine’s independent media outlets put black banners across their websites and blank spaces on their front pages to dramatize what passage of the defamation law would mean. That helped publicize the issue at an awkward time for Yanukovych.
He was in New York last week for the United Nations General Session, eager to cozy up to Europeans and Americans and hoping to take home a photo of himself smiling alongside Barack and Michelle Obama.
Yanukovych made it known he was the one who stopped the defamation bill and said members of his party must not have understood what they were voting for when they passed it on first reading. Perhaps, but, if his pals in parliament did not understand the contents of the legislation, they surely understood that it had the president’s approval.
And American leaders – especially President Obama, who chose to pose with the grinning Ukrainian strong man at the UN – should understand what kind of person they are dealing with.
If 21st century dictators are all going to look like smiling businessmen and all have their messages smoothed and sold by American and European PR firms, it means the United States will need a lot more than a robust military to defend democracy and human rights.
We will need a smart and effective diplomatic corps. Luckily, despite the efforts of shortsighted budget cutters in Congress who think 2 percent is too large a share of the federal budget to devote to our entire foreign policy effort, American diplomats are on the job.
Like U.S. embassies around the world, the embassy here in Kyiv takes an active role in supporting pro-democracy groups, independent media and cultural programs that promote an open, just society.
Americans have learned to honor the men and women in the military who put themselves in harm’s way. It would be good to also give full credit to the men and women in our diplomatic corps who fight little battles for freedom every day. As we know from the murder of U.S. diplomats in Libya last month, their work is not lacking in danger.
In confrontations with tomorrow’s smooth-talking tyrants in sleek business suits, American diplomats will be more necessary than Navy Seals.
Cartoon exhibition of Los Angeles Times’ David Horsey
Where: Small Gallery of Mystetsky Arsenal,10 Lavrska St., 288-5140.
When: Through Oct.8, open daily 12 p.m. – 7 p.m. (closed on Monday).
http://artarsenal.in.ua/gallery.html;
Where: Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine
3 40 Richia Zhovtnia Ave.(Dymiivska metro)
When: Open daily 9:15 a.m. – 5 p.m. (closed on Saturday, Sunday) (044) 524-81-38
