In only two months, President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration has sought to turn back the clock. It has ridden roughshod over the Constitution; cancelled local elections set for May; disbanded civic society groups; denied the opposition parliamentary positions to which it is legally entitled; purged the ranks of civil servants not loyal to the regime; appointed notoriously corrupt and discredited officials. The list goes on. Added to this litany of authoritarianism is a clamp down on the media. Thankfully it hasn’t gone unnoticed in the West.
Leading the chorus of disapproval is the media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders). The Paris-based body said it was “dismayed by an alarming deterioration in the press freedom situation in Ukraine since the two rounds of the presidential election, on Jan. 17 and Feb. 7.
In recent years, Ukraine rose significantly in its press freedom index. These gains are being threatened by “a return of intimidation and physical attacks on journalists and abuse of authority towards the media.”
So what is happening? How is Ukraine’s media landscape being impacted? And what should be done about it?
Basically, there are three ways in which the plurality and freedom of Ukraine’s media are being threatened.
First, physical attacks on journalists are on the rise. On 12 April, Andriy Vey, the editor of the daily newspaper Express was seized outside his home in Lviv and taken to a police station for questioning. Concerned Express reporters who inquired about him at the station were assaulted and their cameras broken. On the same day, in Dnipropetrovsk, Borys Brahinskiy, a journalist who works for TV 9 Kanal was savagely beaten by an unidentified youth on leaving the TV station. Sadly, these are not isolated incidents. Other journalists have been “roughed up” or detained for questioning in the normal course of their duties.
Second, we are seeing the application of state and municipal bureaucratic resources to muzzle the media. A typical example is that of the independently owned Avtor-V TV station which was nearly shut down when its rental contract was terminated six months early by the municipal authorities in Dniprodzerzhynsk. Its offense was to criticize the municipal administration and newly elected mayor. More recently, on April 21, only those journalists handpicked by the regime were admitted to a press briefing in Kharkiv, where Yanukovych and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, met to finalize the new gas agreement. All Russian reporters who followed Medvedev were granted access.
Third, a less obvious but equally pernicious way the media is being controlled is by owners exerting influence over their editors. This is becoming prevalent among certain TV stations owned and controlled by oligarchs loyal to Yanukovych. One such station is the Inter Channel, which has Valery Khoroshkovsky, chairman of the State Security Service, or SBU, as one of its owners.
It is no coincidence that opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has not once been invited onto Inter’s “Big Politics” show. An open letter signed by prominent opposition leaders and sent to the program moderator, Yevgeniy Kiselyov, pointed out this fact and requested that she be permitted to appear.
The letter was met with derision by Kiselyov, who argues that the opposition does not have any questions worth asking — just “empty statements.” Are we to believe that, in a democracy of 46 million people, the voice of the opposition leader is of no consequence? We are talking about a twice former prime minister and a woman who attracted more than 45 percent of the popular vote in the second round of the presidential election.
These worrying developments – which include a decree by Yanukovych to disband the Commission for Establishing Freedom of Expression – are warning shots that should reverberate across the free world. The international community must respond. It should not leave it to watchdogs like Reporters Sans Frontières and Amnesty International to be its moral conscience. This ability by the West to turn a blind eye to authoritarianism in return for the illusion of stability could have huge repercussions beyond Ukraine’s borders.
As the American historian, Henry Steele Commager wrote: “The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.”
The development of an authoritarian regime, incapable of exercising real discretion on the borders of the European Union, should be of deep concern to Brussels and Washington, especially as this nation has its hands on valves governing the flow of gas to EU states. And while the European Parliament’s endorsement of Ukraine’s right to apply for full EU membership is a step in the right direction, Europe needs to be proactive in condemning the violation of fundamental democratic principles if this particular seed is to germinate.
At home, the new president and prime minister of Ukraine need to abide by the treaties their country has signed and adhere to the Constitution which they are sworn to uphold. Freedom of expression should not be confined to political elites or to those few who own printing presses or TV stations. It belongs to the people. It is not a means to an end in its own right, but rather the foundation upon which to build a free and prosperous society.
Oleh Medvedev is a political expert and political consultant to ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
