Now every Ukrainian can nominate their candidates for traitor, bandit, corrupt official, liar and take part in the public condemnation of the person.
One needs only to send a letter to the newly launched Parazyt Center website and win approval from the anonymous activists staffing the site.
Parazyt (Parasite) Center positions itself as non-governmental, non-profit organization that studies and collects information on populism, corruption and lies of Ukrainian government officials, lawmakers, police officers, judges, and journalists.
The website started working in June. It has already included more than 40 Ukrainian politicians, journalists and even watchdogs in its list of “parasites.”
The standards are loose.
A person can become a “parasite” for liking the wrong post on Facebook, quoting Russian politicians, being populist or daring to criticize Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
For instance, Anatoliy Grytsenko, politician and former defense minister of Ukraine, was inducted into the ranks of bloodsuckers as “a traitor who dared to criticize the chief commander of the country at war.”
Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center watchdog, and reformist lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko – both prominent Poroshenko’s critics – were also included in the database of “parasites.”
Not only Poroshenko’s critics but potential rivals – including the Batkivshchyna Party, Radical Party and Opposition Bloc lawmakers are included in the list.
Experts say the website has all the earmarkings of a political project aimed to smear rivals ahead of the 2019 election campaign for president and parliament.
It’s a modern PR technology, media expert Otar Dovzhenko told the Kyiv Post on July 21.
“On the other hand, there are so many such (anonymous attack) projects in Ukraine that almost nobody takes them seriously already,” Dovzhenko added.
Birth of parasite
The Parazyt website’s pitch to the audience is that people tend to forget the transgressions of politicians and vote them into office again and again. So the website is here to put together a list of all the wrongdoers.
Parazyt is run by anonymous activists.
However, according to Whois website tracking app, Godaddy.com, the U.S. domain selling company, registered the website on June 11, in the American state of Arizona.
Parazyt Center creators say they get information from open sources, including media and social networks mostly.
“We ask every Ukrainian to send us an information about all the bloodsuckers who destroy our country,” reads the message on the website.
The Parazyt Center press service told the Kyiv Post: “Do you really think the truth is a fierce rhetoric? We here deal not only with corrupt politicians-parasites but also with corrupt parasites – journalists. There is no difference for us, as the corrupt journalists fulfill their orders.”
According to Parazyt Center policy, every citizen can anonymously send information about their local authorities, government officials, lawmakers, and journalists to [email protected] for fact-checking.
Don’t touch Poroshenko
A Kyiv Post journalist registered an undercover email account and submitted nominees to Parazyt website: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Interior Ministry advisor Anton Gerashchenko and Opposition Bloc leader Yuri Boyko.
The website requires to see examples of the candidates’ wrongdoing. With Poroshenko, the Kyiv Post journalist attached stories covering the Panama Papers case, in which the finances of numerous politicians were scrutinized — and Poroshenko was shown to have an offshore entity which he failed to mention in his assets declaration. He also set it up while holding the presidential office, despite the law banning him from business activities.
But anonymous activists were unconvinced of any illegal activity.
“Not a single accuser provided facts that Poroshenko used offshore jurisdiction to minimize tax payments in Ukraine. So here we see nothing more than an attempt of a constant pressure on Ukraine’s government and a reputation blow to Mr. Poroshenko with the aim to destabilize the society and sabotage the international image of Ukraine as a reliable partner,” reads the Parazyt Center’s emailed response.
The activists also refused to add Gerashchenko to the list on the populism accusation, citing as a reason that some of the submitted news articles were printed by in “pro-Kremlin” media.
But they accepted the pick of Boyko, an opposition politician and a former ally of disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. With Boyko, the wrongdoing that the anonymous activists found valid was a 2011-2012 scandal, when Boyko, then-Energy Minister, bought an offshore drilling rig on behalf of the state at an inflated price of $800 million from a U.K. company that appeared to have links to Boyko himself.
In 2014, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine started criminal proceedings in the case. Boyko was questioned as a witness. Wit the investigation still open, Boyko in 2014 was elected to the Ukrainian parliament with the Opposition Bloc, a 43-member minority made up of many former allies of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
As of July, the investigation is ongoing.
Not the first one
An online database of “wrongdoers” isn’t an entirely new phenomenon in Ukraine. A website called Myrotvorets (Peacemaker) has been putting together a public database of the people who are a threat to Ukraine’s national security since 2014.
Many people profiled on Myrotvorets are Russian-backed militants fighting against Ukraine’s government in eastern Ukraine. However, the website also features pro-Russian civilians.
Myrotvorets found itself in the middle of a scandal in 2016, when it published a database of names and contacts of Ukrainian, Russian, and international journalists who obtained press accreditations from the Russian-backed separatists that control Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The journalists on the list were labelled traitors and “scoundrels” for “cooperating” with an enemy.
When some journalists from the list complained of getting phone threats, human rights activists and Western governments demanded that the list was taken down. The website shut down for a short time, but renewed its work after getting massive support from activists and some of Ukrainian government officials. Its biggest supporter was Gerashchenko, a member of parliament and advisor to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
