Honcharenko died two days later in a hospital,
having managed to tell his son-in-law about the assailants before he lost
consciousness.  Despite clear indications
that he had been the target of a deliberate attack the investigators are trying
to close the case and deny any link with Honcharenko’s work as an
environmentalist.  The Dnipropetrovsk Regional Prosecutor Natalya Marchuk has said she does not agree with the investigators,
yet there is no evidence of any real measures being taken to solve the crime.

Ongoing secrecy

Considerable publicity and uncomfortable
questions in Geneva about compliance (or lack thereof) with the Aarhus Convention resulted in the
removal of hazardous scrap metal from Dnipropetrovsk. But there has been no
indication of where it had been taken, and no answers to other questions of
clear public importance.  

Four
days before the attack, on 27 July, Honcharenko had informed that 180 tons of
scrap metal – three massive heat exchangers – contaminated
with one of the world’s most toxic chemicals, hexachlorbenzol, were being
transported without any proper safety measures around the city of Kryvy Rih in
the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. He warned of likely attempts to cut the metal up and
mix it with uncontaminated metal. Ample evidence was provided of efforts to
alert the authorities to the danger and the latter’s total failure to respond. 

During subsequent months all the standard denials
and/or assurances were heard.  At a
meeting of the working group monitoring compliance with the Aarhus Convention
in Geneva, the Environment Ministry’s spokesperson asserted that a committee
had been set up and that the results of tests were expected on Sept. 10. 

No tests were ever forthcoming. Nor is
there any sign that the infringements listed in a letter to the Aarhus
Convention Bureau have been eliminated.  

Publicly
Dangerous Silence

The implications if people who expose inconvenient
information of public importance can be killed with effective impunity are
terrifying. 

There was immediate response from some
media sources – Kyiv Post and Telekritika, and statements from the
international NGOs Article 19
and Frontline Defenders.  A large number of NGOs and concerned public
figures, well-known journalists and others endorsed a call for a proper
investigation. 

Packed into one paragraph the above can
sound impressive. National input, however, was confined to fobbing international
bodies off with yet another fictitious committee; the story was not taken up by
the national media, and not surprisingly a year on there is no sign at all of
any real effort to find Honcharenko’s killers. 

The record is abysmal, the consequences of
such impunity frightening.

Halya Coynash is a
member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.