Attacks on journalists and civil activists, political manipulation of patriotic sentiment in wartime, and controversial progress in reforms have all pushed Ukraine’s democracy score down this year – the first drop since the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution that drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power, according to the latest Nations in Transit report by Freedom House.
Freedom House, a United States government-funded research institute based in Washington, D.C., reported on April 11 that the number of attacks on non-governmental organizations, their leaders, and journalists in Ukraine had increased in 2017.
Not least this was because of slow progress in judicial and anti-corruption reforms, which Freedom House assessed as “mixed.” While the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine is investigating high-level corruption, the results so far are weak: no corrupt top officials have been jailed.
Moreover, the Anti-Corruption Court promised by the President Petro Poroshenko and demanded by civil society and international donors is yet to be established. Although a law on setting up the court has passed first reading in parliament in March, there are questions over whether the new institution can guarantee the independence of the judiciary and its immunity from political manipulation. The signs do not look good, as the earlier selection of judges for the Supreme Court showed that candidates that failed an integrity check by civil society organizations could still be appointed.
And while Ukraine’s leaders struggle to clamp down on corrupt public officials and judges, they have no hesitation in cracking down on anti-corruption watchdogs and investigative journalists, Freedom House said. In 2017, anti-corruption activists were the targets of restrictive laws, criminal investigations, smear campaigns, and physical attacks.
For instance, the Anti-Corruption Action Center is under criminal investigation for alleged tax evasion, and its leader, Vitaliy Shabunin, faces imprisonment for assaulting a blogger, Vsevolod Filimonenko, an aide to pro-government lawmaker Serhiy Melnychuk. Although the conflict was personal, the charges were reclassified as “an attack on journalist” in January – charges that carry a stricter penalty. Civil and media watchdogs have described the case against Shabunin as political persecution.
Read more: First hearing held in case against anti-graft activist Shabunin
In addition, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, passed a law obliging anti-graft activists to declare their income and assets in the same way public officials are required to. Despite international criticism, the law has not been revoked.
Read more: Parliament fails to cancel asset declarations for anti-graft activists
While Ukraine continues to fend off Russian aggression on the east and fight Russian propaganda, some politicians take advantage of patriotic sentiment by accusing activists and journalists of anti-Ukrainian position, Freedom House said.
Last November journalists from Schemes, an investigative program of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty Ukrainian service, were assaulted by the bodyguards of oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk as they were filming his arrival at Kyiv’s Zhulyany airport from Russia on his private jet. Later, Medvedchuk, a member of the Trilateral Contact group on the Donbas peace talks, accused the journalists of trying to sabotage a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia’s occupation authorities in the Donbas.
“By accusing NGOs and journalists of anti-national sentiment, politicians are attempting to exclude legitimate voices from public debate simply because they criticize the government,” Nate Schenkkan, the project director of Nations in Transit, said in a statement released on April 11.
In the meantime, attacks on journalists, sometimes deadly, remain common. The investigation into the murder of Belarusian journalist Pavlo Sherement, killed in Kyiv in July 2016, has stalled. The bodyguards who assaulted reporters of Schemes and Nashi Groshi investigative media projects have not been punished.
These are just a few examples.
Such attacks have sapped the momentum from the institutional reform process, wrote Schenkkan. “Although decentralization reforms are continuing, other key priorities, including anti-corruption efforts, have stalled. The window of opportunity has not closed in Ukraine, but it has shrunk,” he wrote.
