Family, journalists critical of state investigation, while authorities say they have turned up no significant leads
of Georgy Gongadze – the 31-year-old editor of news Web site Ukrainska Pravda – who vanished on Sept. 16 from the center of Kyiv.
Presidential spokesman Oleksandr Martynenko told reporters Sept. 27 that he had “no information” about Gongadze. “The reason for his disappearance and his fate remain unknown,” he said.
Gongadze was last seen about 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 16 when he left the home of a coworker on his way to meet his wife and twin 3-year-old daughters. He never arrived home.
His disappearance prompted immediate outrage from friends and family and suspicion among some fellow journalists who indicated that Gongadze’s disappearance may have been related to his published criticism of shady deals involving the upper echelons of Ukraine’s ruling elite.
On Sept. 21, a handful of journalists walked out of parliament vowing not to return until Gongadze was found. On Sept. 23, about 200 journalists – some carrying homemade torches – marched down Khreshchatyk behind a banner that read: “Who’s next?” Nearly 1,000 others joined the protest, which was organized by the Coalition for Freedom of Choice.
Unlike many incidents of harassment and intimidation of media that reportedly occur in Ukraine, the Gongadze case has drawn attention from the highest levels of government.
President Leonid Kuchma announced that he would personally oversee the investigation, and a special Rada commission was set up to look into the disappearance. Even U.S. Ambassador Steven Pifer went on a nationally televised talk show to discuss the matter.
Still, Gongadze’s cohorts question whether police are adequately investigating the disappearance. They point to comments made by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Dzhyha on Sept. 25 that two individuals claim they saw the missing journalist at Eric’s Bierstube in Kyiv’s Moskovsky district with two other patrons at 8 p.m. on Sept. 17 – the day after he was reported missing.
He also reported that Ukrainian lawmaker Serhy Pravdenko, a member of the special Rada commission, told ministry officials that he had been approached by an unnamed individual who said he knew Gongadze was carrying “quite a bit of money” the day he was reported missing.
Friends and colleagues of Gongadze were unimpressed with these new leads, pointing out that Eric’s Bierstube is located in Kyiv’s Starokyivsky district – not the Moskovsky district – and that Gongadze could not have been carrying more than $50 the night he disappeared.
In pure Soviet fashion, authorities have answered criticism with a barrage of statistics indicating their productivity. Since Gongadze was reported missing, authorities say they have looked for him in more than 17,000 locations, including 3,208 buildings, 4,815 cellars, 2,232 sewage canals, 39 recreation camps, and 67 automobile cooperative garages.
In addition, government sleuths say they have scheduled interviews with 29 of Gongadze’s closest contacts and another 157 individuals, with whom he was in touch by phone.
These statistics are little comfort for the two people closest to Gongadze, Olena Pritula, the editor of Ukrainska Pravda, and Gongadze’s wife, Myroslava, who both say that the investigation appears to have been botched from the start.
“[Investigators] from Kyiv’s Pechersk Prosecutor General’s Office interviewed me on Sept. 22, six days after Georgy disappeared,” said Pritula, who was the last person to see Gongadze. “I thought it strange that [investigators] were uninterested in factual details, which supported concrete theories about what – and who – could be behind Georgy’s disappearance,” she said.
Myroslava Gongadze said it was not clear what information agents were looking for.
“They keep asking me to recount what I did the day before Georgy disappeared, instead of asking about what happened last July, when goons were sitting on the bench in front of our apartment building, keeping track of our comings and goings,” she said.
Shortly after Gongadze vanished, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry announced that their investigation would focus on three possible scenarios: that Gongadze planned his own disappearance; that he was involved in an accident; or that the abduction was related to Gongadze’s articles, which were often critical of Ukraine’s powerbrokers.
Security Services (SBU) Chief Leonid Derkach – whose agents on Sept. 22 said they had foiled a planned coup by a group of renegade pensioners – said on Sept. 25 that he had information that might shed light on the case, but would not say what it was.
That same day, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer announced on national television [UT-2] that the United States viewed Gongadze’s disappearance as a new element in press intimidation.
“When we try to explain freedom of speech in Ukraine to Washington, we say that on one hand certain issues remain taboo and certain persons are beyond criticism, but we never say that a journalist has disappeared,” Pifer said on Ukraine’s most popular television talk show, Epicenter.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) suggested that American diplomats use the word “murder” when discussing the media situation in Ukraine.
This year alone, Ihor Bondar, head of television channel AMT, was shot dead in Crimea; Vasyl Chudik, head of radio station Nezavisimost, was found with his carotid artery severed by broken glass in Lviv; and Myroslava Mayorchuk, crime reporter and editor of independent television channel STB, was found hanged in her Kyiv apartment, according to CPJ.
“These cases demonstrate that Ukrainian journalists put their lives at risk when they dare to criticize government officials and other powerful figures,” concluded CPJ Executive Director Ann K. Cooper in an open letter to President Kuchma on Sept. 26.
U.S. officials and representatives of Euro-Atlantic structures, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe, have for years been telling Ukrainian officials that technical and financial assistance would be linked to Ukraine’s observance of basic human rights and press liberties, which OSCE says have been “comprehensively ignored.”
