Ukraine

Ukraine is rather behind where the Internet is concerned. The price of computers and especially the cost of connections is too high for most people. Continuing delay in privatising UkrNet, the government telecommunications firm, is also an obstacle to the introduction of competition and thus much lower prices. But bold journalists in this country under the iron hand of President Leonid Kuchma have been using the Internet since the late 1990s to put out independent news. This has come at a big price, as shown by the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze. Progress in the Gongadze murder enquiry Ukrainskaya Pravda was founded in spring 2000 as the first opposition newspaper published only online. Its incisive articles soon made it popular with Ukrainians. "It's a way to be a free journalist that's otherwise impossible in Ukraine," said Gongadze, its founder and editor. In the months before he vanished, he several times reported he had been threatened. In July 2000, he even complained to the country's prosecutor-general, Mihailo Potebenko, about "deliberate intimidation" to frighten him and stop him working. On 2 November that year, his headless corpse was found near Tarashcha, 140 km from Kiev. Revelations that top government officials were probably involved jolted Kuchma's regime. But the authorities vigorously blocked a search for the truth. The prosecutor-general's office and the interior ministry opposed any serious attempt to investigate Gongadze's disappearance and murder. But investigations started making progress in 2002. On 19 July, the prosecutor-general ordered a new analysis of tape recordings implicating Kuchma and agreed to a new autopsy on Gongadze's body with the help of European experts. On 5 August, a new prosecutor-general, Svyatoslav Piskun, granted Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard the right to legally represent the civil parties in the case. On 3 September, Piskun admitted the law had been broken during the enquiry, formally recognised the body as Gongadze's and that he had been decapitated. On 10 September, Piskun said the public prosecutor in Tarashcha, where the body had been found, had been charged with forging the initial statement about the body and with not having tried to identify the body immediately. The Tarashcha police investigator, Sergy Belinsky, was also charged with forgery. On the second anniversary of Gongadze's disappearance, on 16 September, Reporters Without Borders asked for permission to re-examine, with an independent expert of its choice, all the forensic tests done so far as well as related documents. It also asked the prosecutor-general's office to question four men who reportedly followed Gongadze in the weeks before he vanished. The same day, Gongadze's widow Myroslava, with the help of the Damocles Network and the Institute of Mass Information, filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights, accusing the prosecutor's office of obstructing investigations. In October, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Ménard and a French pathologist went through all the results of the previous forensic analyses. An independent autopsy, at the request of Gongadze's mother and arranged by Reporters Without Borders, was done in January 2003 and formally identified the body as that of Gongadze. The investigation, which should now focus on former interior ministry officials, has not produced any further results. Monitoring increases In January 2001, an Internet department was set up in the State Information Committee with the aim of "monitoring false news about Ukraine." On 28 February, a government decree put the State Centre for Information Security under the secret police, the SBU, which thus gained control over the Internet. On 1 June, an NGO was set up to administer websites using the national domain name ".ua". Among its founders, apart from the SBU, were several ISPs previously in charge of running the domain but which had yielded control to the new body. The NGO proposed a law on 12 November to step up monitoring of the Internet under the guise of fighting terrorism, organised crime and pornography. On 26 June, investigative journalist Oleg Yeltsov was summoned for questioning by the SBU and accused of "violating state secrets" by posting on the website Ukraina Kriminalna (Criminal Ukraine) an article describing the lifestyle of former secret police chief Leonid Derkach and his son, a member of Ukraine's oligarchy. Yeltsov's apartment was searched while he was away being questioned. On 16 July, SBU chief Volodymir Radchenko told a press conference in Kiev that the SBU wanted all Internet users to register with the authorities. He said this was so a directory could be produced for users. On 23 August, President Kuchma signed a decree about openness of telecommunications in Ukraine that gave the government a month to spell out steps to improve state regulation of the flow of information. On 25 September, access to the website of the opposition newspaper Antenna in Cherkassy was blocked. The previous day, the local militia had visited the paper's offices and offered "protection" for the website. In December 2001, journalists of the online newspaper Forum were called in by the SBU and accused of revealing state secrets on the website on 15 June that year in an article reporting the results of an inspection of the state reserves office. Legal aid from the Institute of Mass Information enabled the journalists to escape prosecution. On 21 February 2002, the editors of the online political newspaper Obkom filed a complaint against the national tax authority the day after its officials went the paper's offices to search them even though they only had a warrant to search a bank on the floor below. Despite editor Sergy Sukhobok's protests and presentation of various legal documents allowing the site to operate, the officials seized computer equipment and some of the archives. Although the tax authority said later the search had been done "by accident," the computers were never returned. LINKS: - The freedom of expression body The Institute of Mass Information - The opposition paper Antenna - The online opposition paper Ukrainskaia Pravda