It’s a shame that this was the only question with any punch and that nobody else thought to take up the topic and highlight the exceedingly tenuous link between the question and the president’s response.
The other questions were disjointed and open, reminiscent of those you’d hear from a psychotherapist, in fact.
The person can relax, decide what is important for him, what he wants to talk about, can feel safe and in his element. That might well have been the president’s impression since, aside from Nayem’s question, there was nothing at all unforeseen.
He could completely forget that this was not feel-good therapy. He was there to report on his activities, answer specific questions, and not just pour out phrases learned by heart.
It was clear, for example, that he would have to speak about former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. It should have been equally clear to all journalists present that he would deliver utterances about independence of the judiciary and how he, of course, cannot interfere.
It could be predicted that he’d pass the buck, claiming he had to go along with what parliament “decided.”
Yet did nobody think to ask in that case why the first “independent” court suddenly decided, following the international storm over Tymoshenko’s detention, to take a long break until just after the Yalta European Strategy conference in September? Or why, in December, a second “independent” court postponed the appeal hearings until the day after the European Union-Ukraine Summit in Kyiv?
Could they not have asked why the president does not intervene by at least asking his own tough questions of the prosecutor or High Council of Justice regarding statements from Ukrainian and international human rights nongovernmental organizations, as well as EU bodies, about serious infringements in Tymoshenko’s right to a fair trial?
After all, even Party of the Regions member of parliament and lawyer Serhiy Holovaty stated publicly that the trial had been full of howling infringements of European standards.
The event was broadcast on state-owned UTV-1 whose notorious track record for muffling important information unflattering to those in power would seem to have been contagious. Other politically motivated prosecutions were not mentioned at all during the press conference which, on the eve of the anniversary of ex-Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko’s detention, was frankly incredible.
Some of the questions below apply equally to former acting defense minister Valery Ivashchenko, who has been in pretrial detention now for 18 months.
Could the president possibly explain why neither he, nor the prosecutor general have responded to statements from Ukrainian and international organizations regarding the lack of any grounds for remanding the former interior minister and opposition leader to custody, or for the automatic extensions to the detention order?
It is his duty as president to safeguard citizens’ constitutional rights to liberty and security, as well as to fair trials.
Has the information given, for example, in the second preliminary monitoring report by the Danish Helsinki Committee been checked out, and by whom? We are, after all, talking about a man who has not been convicted of any crime having been held in detention more than a year for “procrastinating with the reading of the case material.”
Lutsenko is charged with offenses which are staggeringly trivial. If, in fact, they can be considered offenses at all, considering the ever-increasing number of prosecution witnesses stating under oath that there was nothing untoward in the actions which Lutsenko is charged with.
It is, moreover, still unclear where the money Yanukovych’s spectacular 60th birthday celebrations came from and when, despite his promise, only a selected few journalists have been shown a selected part of his reportedly sumptuous residence at Mezhyhirya, some questions would surely be in order. One would like to know how the festivities to mark police day in December 2008 and 2009, which is one of the supposed offenses, differed from the prosecutor day festivities in 2011.
It would have been good to ask the president why he is not reacting as the trial of Lutsenko descends into farce. In August, two of the official victims in the case stated that the prosecutor general’s investigator had told them what to write in their official statement about Lutsenko.
Each week there are reports that witnesses have been interrogated since the investigation ended, or that they have retracted their testimony, sometimes accusing the investigators of twisting their words.
On Dec. 13, the prosecutor suggested that, despite the absence of a witness, his pre-trial testimony be read out in court. Judge Serhiy Vovk saw fit to ignore the defense’s objection that the witness had already begun giving testimony which had differed significantly from that given to the investigators.
Does the president also see fit to ignore such violations of citizens’ rights?
It is a shame that he was not asked. The argument that there’s no need to ask, as we already know why Lutsenko is on trial, dooms everyone to remain suspended in a world behind the looking glass where the rule of law and independent judges exist only on elaborate television stunts, otherwise known as the president’s press conference.
Halya Coynash is a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group.
