Georgiy R. Gongadze

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Georgiy Gongadze
Георгій Русланович Ґонґадзе
Georgiy Ruslanovich Gongadze
Born May 21, 1969
Tbilisi, Georgia
Died September ? 2000
unknown, Ukraine

Georgiy Ruslanovich Gongadze (Ukrainian: Георгій Русланович Ґонґадзе, Heorhiy Ruslanovych Gongadze, Georgian: გიორგი ღონღაძე May 21, 1969 – September 2000?) was a Ukrainian journalist kidnapped and murdered in 2000. The circumstances of his death became a national scandal and a focus for protests against the government of the then President, Leonid Kuchma. Gongadze's killers have yet to be publicly identified or put on trial, although two men accused of his murder were arrested in March 2005. His widow Myroslava Gongadze and their two children received political asylum in the United States and have lived there since 2001.

Contents

[edit] Career

Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Gongadze was the son of a Georgian politician and a Ukrainian nurse. He was educated at the Ivan Franko National University of L'viv in western Ukraine. His mother Lesya was born there and lives in Lviv now. He became a successful journalist, first in Georgia (where he reported on the conflict in Abkhazia) and then in Ukraine. He worked for the Kiev-based radio station Kontynent, on which he had his own show called First round with Heorhiy Gongadze. His strongly independent line soon attracted hostility from the increasingly authoritarian government of Leonid Kuchma; during the October 1999 presidential election, his commentaries prompted a call from Kuchma's headquarters to say "that he had been blacklisted to be dealt with after the election." Visiting New York in January 2000 with other Ukrainian journalists, he warned of "the strangulation of the freedom of speech and information in our state."

In April 2000, Gongadze co-founded a news website, Ukrayinska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth), as a means of sidestepping the government's increasing influence over the mainstream media. He observed that following the muzzling of a prominent pro-opposition newspaper after the election, "today there is practically no objective information available about Ukraine". The website specialized in political news and commentary, focusing particularly on President Kuchma, the country's wealthy "oligarchs" and the official media.

In June 2000, Gongadze wrote an open letter to Ukraine's chief prosecutor about harassment from the SBU, the Ukrainian secret police, directed towards himself and his Ukrayinska Pravda colleagues and apparently related to an investigation into a murder case in the southern port of Odesa. He complained that had been forced into hiding because of harassment from the secret police, that he said he and his family were being followed, that his staff were being harassed, and that the SBU were spreading a rumor that he was wanted on a murder charge. [1]

[edit] Disappearance and investigations

Gongadze disappeared on September 16, 2000 after failing to return home. Foul play was suspected from the outset. The matter immediately attracted widespread public attention and media interest. 80 journalists signed an open letter to President Kuchma urging an investigation and complaining that "during the years of Ukrainian independence, not a single high-profile crime against journalists has been fully resolved." Kuchma responded by ordering an immediate inquiry. This was, however, viewed with some skepticism. Opposition politician Hryhoriy Omelchenko reported that the disappearance had coincided with Gongadze receiving documents on corruption within the president's own entourage. The Ukrainian Parliament set up a parallel inquiry run by a special commission. Neither investigation produced any results.

Two months later, on November 3, 2000, a body was found in a forest in the Taraschansky Raion (district) of the Kiev Oblast (province), some 70 km (40 miles) outside Kiev. The corpse had been decapitated and doused in acid, apparently to make identification more difficult; forensic investigations found that the acid bath and decapitation had occurred while the victim was still alive. A group of journalists first identified it as being that of Gongadze, a finding confirmed a few weeks later by his wife Myroslava. In a bizarre twist, the corpse was then confiscated by the police and resurfaced in a morgue in Kiev. The authorities did not officially acknowledge that the body was that of Gongadze until the following February and did not definitively confirm it until as late as March 2003. The body was eventually identified and was to be returned to Gongadze's family to be buried two years after his disappearance. However, the funeral never took place. As of June 23, 2006 Gongadze's mother refused to accept the remains offered as it was not the body of her son (http://www.ostro.org/shownews_ks.php?id=27076&lang=ru). While visiting Kiev in July 2006 Gongadze's widow Myroslava emphasized that the funeral has became now a solemnly family issue, and the date of the funeral is soon to be appointed.

On November 28, 2000, opposition politician Oleksandr Moroz publicized secret tape recordings which he claimed implicated President Kuchma in Gongadze's murder. The recordings were said to be of discussions between Kuchma, presidential chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, and were claimed to have been provided by an unnamed SBU officer (later named as Major Mykola Mel'nychenko, Kuchma's bodyguard). The conversations included comments expressing annoyance at Gongadze's writings as well as discussions of ways to shut him up, such as deporting him and arranging from him to be kidnapped and taken to Chechnya. Killing him was, however, not mentioned and doubt was cast on the tapes' authenticity, as the quality of the recordings was poor. Moroz told the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) that "the professionally organized disappearance, a slow-moving investigation, disregard for the most essential elements of investigation and incoherent comments by police officials suggest that the case was put together."

The affair became a major political scandal (referred to in Ukraine as the "Cassette Scandal" or "Tapegate"). Kuchma strongly denied Moroz's accusations and threatened a libel suit, blaming the tapes on foreign agents. He later acknowledged that his voice was indeed one of those on the tapes, but claimed that they had been selectively edited to distort his meaning.

[edit] Crises and controversy

The affair became an international crisis for the Ukrainian government during 2001, with the European Union expressing dissatisfaction at the official investigation, rumors of Ukrainian suspension from the Council of Europe, and censure from the OSCE, which described Gongadze's death as a case of "censorship by killing" and castigated the "extremely unprofessional" investigation. [2] Mass demonstrations erupted in Kiev in February 2001, calling for the resignation of Kuchma and the dismissal of other key officials. He did sack the head of the SBU, Leonid Derkach, and the chief of the presidential bodyguard, Volodymyr Shepel, but refused to step down. [3] The government invited the US FBI to investigate, though it does not appear that this offer was ever taken up. The protests were eventually forcibly broken up by the police.

In May 2001, interior minister Yuri Smirnov announced that the murder had been solved - it was attributed to a random act of violence committed by two "hooligans" with links to a gangster called "Cyclops". Conveniently, both of the killers were said to now be dead. The claim was dismissed by the opposition and by the government's own prosecutor-general, whose office issued a statement denying Smirnov's claims. [4]

Mass protests again broke out in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities in September 2002 to mark the second anniversary of Gongadze's death. The demonstrators again called for Kuchma's resignation but the protests again failed to achieve their goal, with police breaking up the protesters' camp.

The prosecutor of the Tarascha district, where Gongadze's body was found, was convicted in May 2003 for abuse of office and falsification of evidence. Serhiy Obozov was found guilty of forging documents and negligence in the investigation and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. However, he was immediately released due to a provision of Ukraine's amnesty laws. [5]

In June 2004, the government claimed that a convicted gangster identified only as "K" had confessed to Gongadze's murder, although there was no independent confirmation of the claim. The ongoing investigation received a setback when a key witness died of spinal injuries apparently sustained while in police custody. [6]

Gongadze's death became a major issue in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, in which the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko pledged to solve the case if he became president. Yushchenko did become president following the subsequent Orange Revolution and immediately launched a new investigation, replacing the country's prosecutor-general.

[edit] Resolution?

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On March 1, 2005, Yushchenko announced that the journalist's suspected killers had been arrested. [7] Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun announced the following day that the case had been solved, telling Ukrainian television that Gongadze had been strangled by employees of the Interior Ministry. Two of the alleged killers were said to be senior policemen working for the Interior Ministry's criminal investigations directorate (CID).[8] Former Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko, one of those recorded with Leonid Kuchma in the "cassette scandal", was also said to be under investigation. The two police colonels accused of the killing have been detained and a third senior policeman, identified as CID commander Oleksiy Pukach, was being sought on an international arrest warrant.

The Ukrainian newspaper Siehodnia ("Today") reported that Gongadze had been abducted by the policemen and accidentally shot in the head while seated in a vehicle, necessitating his decapitation (to avoid the bullet being recovered and matched to a police weapon). His body had been doused in petrol which had failed to burn properly, and had then been dumped. [9]

On March 4, Yuri Kravchenko was found dead in a dacha in the elite residential area of Koncha-Zaspa, outside Kiev. He had died from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds, though some speculated that he might have been assassinated to prevent him from testifying as a witness. Hryhory Omelchenko, who chaired the parliamentary committee that investigated the Gongadze case, told the New York Times that Kravchenko had ordered Pukach to abduct Gongadze on President Kuchma's orders. Kuchma himself has denied this allegation but has since been interviewed by investigators.

In April/May 2005, Piskun released more details of the ongoing investigation. He told the press that after Gongadze was murdered, a second group disinterred him and re-buried him where he was eventually found, in the constituency of Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz. According to Piskun, the aim was to undermine the government (led by Viktor Yushchenko when he was still Prime Minister). The second group was part of or allied with the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (SDPUo), a pro-oligarch grouping which had been hit hard by Yushchenko's crackdown on corruption and therefore wanted to see his government toppled. According to the journal Ukrayina moloda (April 14, 2005), the SDPUo moved Gongadze in order to discredit President Leonid Kuchma and force early elections, which could have led to party leader Medvedchuk succeeding Kuchma.

As of June 6, 2006, three former policemen are on trial, charged with the killing of Georgiy Gongadze. Another suspect, ex-police officer, Oleksiy Pukach is believed to have fled abroad and therefore charged but not on trial. No-one has been charged for ordering the murder. The trial started on 9 January 2006. On the day the trial started his widow Myroslava Gongadze commented on the fact that no-one has been charged for the killing: "They are known and they should be punished just the same as those who will be sitting in the dock today".

[edit] Name spelling disambiguation

Note that the pronunciation and sometimes spelling of Gongadze's name may differ following the phonetics of different languages. The proper Georgian name Georgi Gongadze became Георгий Гонгадзе in Russian and Георгій Гонгадзе in Ukrainian. While the Cyrillic character Г (He) is pronounced as G in Russian, its pronunciation in Ukrainian has no close match in English and is usually transliterated as H. This is why Gongadze (born of a Ukrainian mother and excellent Ukrainian speaker) was often mentioned as Heorhiy Honhadze in Ukrainian. To add further confusion, Ukrainian also uses the modified letter Ґ (Ghe) for a G in foreign names, which has been used in spelling Gongadze's last name (Ґонґадзе), but not his first name (Георгій). Some sources also refer to him as Georgy Gongadze.

[edit] Reporters killed in Ukraine

Year Date Event
1995 April Vladimir Ivanov of Slava Sevastopolya, in Sevastopol [1]
1996 May Igor Hrushetskyin Cherkassy[1]
1997 March 13 Pyotr Shevchenko, correspondent for the daily Kievskiye Vedomosti in Lugansk, Ukraine, is found hanging in an abandoned building in Kiev. He had co-authored articles about disputes between the mayor of Lugansk and the local branch of the Ukrainian Security Services.[2]
August 11 Boris Derevyanko, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian newspaper, Verchernaya Odessa, shot twice and killed while on the way to an editorial board meeting at his office.[2]
1999 May 16 Igor Bondar director of the AMT television station, was shot and killed in the an Odessa residential neighbourhood, as he was driving in a car with Boris Vikhrov, the Odessa court's presiding judge. The magistrate was also killed in the attack. This double murder was carried out by men with Kalashnikov-style automatic weapons riding in a car. [2]
2000 September 16 Georgiy Gongadze
2000 June 24 Oleh Breus publisher of the regional weekly, XXI Vek, was shot dead by two gunmen outside his home in Luhansk, Ukraine. He was shot in the head and back at point blank range as he was getting out of his car. The motive for the murder remains unknown, although colleagues at XXI Vek said they had received threats in recent months. Breus himself narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in December 2000. [2]
July 7 Ihor Oleksandrov, director of the private TV and radio station TOR in Slavyansk, died of injuries sustained on July 3, when four unidentified men wielding baseball bats attacked him at his office. Local media suggested that Oleksandrov's death was linked to his investigations into corruption and organised crime.[2][3]
2003 December 14 Volodymyr Karachevtsev, 47, deputy editor-in-chief of Kuryer newspaper, was found dead in his home in Melitopol, Zaporizhzhya region. He was discovered hanging from the handle of his refrigerator. Karachevtsev was also chairman of the regional independent union of journalists and a correspondent for the online publication, Vlasti.net. Police did not rule out the possibility of murder.[2]
2004 March 3 Yuriy Chechyk, director of Radio Yuta in Poltava, died under suspicious circumstances in a car crash. He was on the way to meet with executives of Radio Liberty's Ukrainian Service, which is often critical of the Ukrainian government, to hold talks on rebroadcasting the station's programmes on the more accessible FM band.[2]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b UKRAINE: CPJ urges vigorous investigations, reforms. Committee to Protect Journalists. Retrieved on 2006-07-05.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Journalist killed, independent media harassed. International Press Institute. Retrieved on 2006-07-05.
  3. ^ UKRAINE: Suspect charged with journalist's murder acquitted. Committee to Protect Journalists. Retrieved on 2006-07-05.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

In English:

In Ukrainian:

Persondata
NAME Gongadze, Georgiy Ruslanovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Гонгадзе, Георгий Русланович
SHORT DESCRIPTION Ukrainian journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1969
PLACE OF BIRTH Tbilisi Georgia (country)
DATE OF DEATH unknown 2000
PLACE OF DEATH unknown Ukraine
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