Editor’s Note: The column was published as part of the information campaign #valueoftheword, curated by the Georgiy Gongadze Prize and Lviv Media Forum.
Whenever a journalist is killed in Ukraine, there are usually immediate calls for a complete and thorough investigation to find those responsible and bring them to justice.
If the murdered journalist is famous enough or has influential supporters, then politicians and prosecutors often try to placate the public by announcing that they will take the investigation under their “personal control” and do everything possible to solve the heinous crime.
Then why are killers almost never brought to justice in Ukraine?
The simple answer is that many in positions of authority just don’t care. So, we as journalists, need to marshal whatever resources we can to form investigative squads the next time that a journalist is assassinated in Ukraine. And given the history of impunity, there will be the next time.
Don’t count on the politicians.
As we know from sad history, they may be behind the murders or at least tacitly accept them.
Don’t count on the police.
They are awash in turf wars and have misplaced priorities as well as questionable competence. They have proven themselves to be utterly incapable of solving any violent or financial crime that has any degree of sophistication or complexity. This is an incredible indictment for a law enforcement apparatus that numbers at least 300,000 — if counting the Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine. They would rather let $20 billion in bank fraud go unpunished than cede any authority to a proper unit investigating high-level financial crimes.
Don’t count on the prosecutors.
Name one good prosecutor general in Ukraine. Name one high-level conviction for murder or corruption in Ukraine’s history. Having a hard time? It’s because there are precious few. The General Prosecutor’s Office, with its 12,000 or 15,000 prosecutors (good luck nailing down a solid number), has historically been set up to protect the powerful, harass opponents and shake down businesses. They open cases for bribes and close them for the same. It’s changed for the better since President Volodymyr Zelensky came to power in some ways — legitimate businesses are reporting few problems with this powerful agency.
Don’t count on the courts.
The nation’s judges here are too often bought off, or too often dispense injustice rather than justice.
Given the sorry state of law enforcement and political will in this nation, a special team of investigative journalists, private investigators, forensic specialists and communications professionals descending on a murder scene could probably do better than the official investigators or the politicians.
This investigative task force looking into the next murder of a journalist in Ukraine would not have any legal authority. But in some ways, its powers may be more effective — the power to shame Ukraine’s authorities into doing the right thing.
After all, we know one of their weak spots: Intense, sustained, incredibly bad publicity.
In re-reading “Beheaded,” an excellent history by former Kyiv Post editor Jaroslav Koshiw about the kidnapping and murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze on Sept. 16, 2000, I’m reminded of what I believe to be the crude motivation for the crime.
It was, quite simply, President Leonid Kuchma’s paranoia and obsession with stamping out any negative publicity in his drive to rule the nation as a dictator. He wasn’t even man enough to tolerate Gongadze’s hard questioning on a TV show, his criticism on a short-lived radio program or hard-hitting articles on what was then a little-read internet news start-up, Ukrayinska Pravda, in 2000.
Kuchma can issue all the denials that he wants, but he is forever implicated in Gongadze’s murder, the unindicted mastermind as far as I am concerned and as far as the evidence shows.
His criminal fixations are recorded in hundreds of hours of audiotapes by his former presidential bodyguard, Mykola Melnychenko, who likely had even more powerful backers. It was 20 years ago this November that member of parliament Oleksandr Moroz exposed those recordings to the world.
The Kuchma administration responded with stunned silence at first. Then it challenged the authenticity of the tapes. But since so many of his criminal orders on the tapes matched events in real life, the administration switched tactics and challenged their legality to be used in court as any kind of evidence.
From Day 1, the Kuchma administration launched an active cover-up, with public lies and misdirection. They interfered in the criminal investigation from the start — beginning with the discovery of Gongadze’s headless body on Nov. 2, 2000. At the time, most news media outlets were under direct pressure from the Kuchma administration to toe the official line. And, of course, son-in-law Victor Pinchuk’s ICTV was front and center in protecting Kuchma.
It was only through the overwhelming abundance of evidence, the relentless pursuit of justice by his widow Myroslava Gongadze and supporters, and the change in power after Kuchma left office in 2005 that a measure of justice was achieved with the convictions of four police officers who carried out the abduction and murder.
And the intense pressure of journalists, more of whom have found their courage and independence since Gongadze’s murder, helped.
This unity and sense of purpose have evolved over time. When journalist Pavel Sheremet was blown up in his car on the way to work on July 20, 2016, investigative journalists came out with a documentary called “Killing Pavel” the very next year.
The Georgiy Gongadze Prize is also another of these initiatives.
The Kyiv Post, with financial support from the Justice for Journalists Foundation, undertook the investigative series “Dying for Truth” to re-examine the murders of journalists in independent Ukraine’s history.
On an international scale, of course, many efforts are under way to call attention to the murders of journalists.
In 2018, the Washington Post launched the Press Freedom Partnership that now has many partners calling attention to the murder and persecution of journalists, as well as free speech issues. One recurring feature spotlights critical journalist cases.
These and more initiatives may not lead us to justice, but they could lead us to truth, and that’s not a bad consolation prize.
They also will not undo the past. But in the future, maybe those who want to harm a journalist will reconsider if they understand that — even if they have nothing to fear from law enforcement — they will nonetheless be exposed, tarnished and hounded to their dying days.
