Editor’s Note: Have you ever walked by a park statue or an engraving of a person on a building’s facade and wondered: Who is the person being depicted and what made him or her worthy of immortality? We have too. To answer these vexing questions, the Kyiv Post started the “Know Your Heroes” feature.
“This must be a monument to either a Komsomol member or, perhaps, a youthful Ukrainian poet,” my friend first said some years ago when passing by a statue in a park on Velyka Vasylkivska Street in downtown Kyiv.
The full-length bronze sculpture portrays a young man in a long coat and an embroidered Ukrainian shirt. I might have agreed with her had I not been a journalist, had I been unaware that the monument is dedicated to another journalist, Georgiy Gongadze, who was kidnapped, killed and beheaded a decade ago.
He was the founder and chief editor of the popular Ukrainska Pravda internet news portal (www.pravda.com.ua).
Widespread coverage of disappearance triggered a cover up by authorities of the murder and who ordered it, triggered a political scandal in the nation and international condemnation of then President Leonid Kuchma, implicated on audiotapes with subordinates threatening Gongadze. Kuchma denies any responsibility for what happened to Gongadze, but the scandal helped launch an anti-Kuchma movement that ultimately led to the Dec. 26, 2004, election of Viktor Yushchenko as president over Viktor Yanukovych.
WHAT
The memorial on 115-121 Velyka Vasylkivska Street shows Gongadze encircled by a seven-meter “tree of life” dotted with notebooks and images of other journalists who suffered or were killed because of their jobs.
Gongadze’s close friends and family are not happy with the statue. Many of those who knew the late journalist complain that the resemblance to him is poor. Gongadze’s close relatives and friends were strongly against having any monument erected until his murder is solved and all those guilty are punished.
However, Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, so eccentric he is called “Cosmos,” ignored their preferences. He initiated a bid for the Hr 2 million project in 2006 and unveiled it in 2008. Officially, it is dedicated to all journalists who lost their lives for pursuing their professional activities. None of Gongadze’s relatives came to the opening ceremony.
Lesia Gongadze, Gongadze’s mother, has consistently said she wants the monument removed. She has also said that politicians, prosecutors and other officials in charge of the murder investigation acted “immorally” by dragging out the case for a decade.
“It’s time to leave in peace Ukraine and these people, who have been living out this horror story for 10 years, release Ukraine from this game of dice, stop politicians from running PR campaigns [using this tragedy], stop them from coming to these symbolic graves, and remove the monument to Gongadze,” Lesia Gongadze told Interfax news service on June 22.
WHO
Georgiy Gongadze, journalist and critic of high-level corruption, was kidnapped and murdered on Sept. 16, 2000.
His headless body was found in the woods of Tarashcha district in Kyiv Oblast. His head was found last summer close to where he had been murdered in the village of Sukholisy, 200 kilometers from Kyiv.
The head was found after a tipoff by Oleksiy Pukach, the former police general who allegedly conducted the kidnapping, murder, and later beheaded and reburied the body.
Pukach was arrested last summer in a secluded village in Zhytomyr Oblast after nearly six years on the run. In March 2008, three of his former subordinates – Mykola Protasov, Valeriy Kostenko and Oleksandr Popovych – all police officers at the time, were convicted and sentenced to 12-13 years in prison for their role in the murder.
According to media reports, Pukach has remained in custody for more than a year and has cooperated with the investigation.
The big question on everyone’s mind is whether he knows and is prepared to name the top officials who are suspected to have given an order to kidnap and kill the journalist. Many suspect that Kuchma and other high-ranking officials, who were the targets of investigative reports claiming they were involved in crimes, of involvement in Gongadze’s murder. Many officials, including Kuchma, have denied involvement. Others died under suspicious circumstances, notably ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, of two gunshot wounds to the head on the day he was supposed to give testimony in the case.
While the investigation drags on endlessly, Gongadze’s relatives will not bury his body or skull remnants. And despite their protest, the monument to Gongadze and other journalists stands as a reminder of the incompetence and unwillingness of those in charge to bring justice in this case.
To add to the mockery, city authorities have also renamed a street and an avenue after Georgiy Gongadze.
Kyiv Post staff writer Iryna Prymachyk can be reached at [email protected].
