UKRAINE: New York, March 17, 2008—An appeals court in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, convicted on Saturday three suspects in the 2000 abduction and murder of Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze. The court sentenced a former police officer, Nikolai Protasov, to 13 years in prison; his fellow officers, Valery Kostenko and Aleksandr Popovych, were given 12-year terms.…
Amid South Asian Conflict, Remarkable ResilienceBy Bob DietzTraffic is sparse during a late-night run to the Bandaranaike International Airport north of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Because of insecurity caused by war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil separatists in the country’s north and east, the streets are given over to police and army checkpoints.…
UKRAINE Intense political rivalries among a trio of powerful leaders created a chaotic and highly politicized environment in which journalists were vulnerable to a variety of abuses. Parliamentary elections in September and negotiations to form a new government in the succeeding months intensified pressure on journalists to take sides. In November, Ukraine’s two pro-Western parties…
Positives: Assaults on journalists decline slightly. Suspects charged, tried in Gongadze slaying. Government stops issuing directives dictating news coverage. Advertising market is growing. Negatives: Judicial system remains politicized. Prosecution in Gongadze case does not include suspected masterminds. Pending bill would make libel a criminal offense. Yushchenko has not followed through on promises to reform state…
New York, March 19, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a death threat made by a local businessman against independent bi-weekly Rivne Vechirne reporter Vlad Isayev for his critical articles. Isayev was threatened as he covered a dispute between local businessman Anatoly Pekhotin and the owners of a private parking lot in the…
New York, March 14, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the closure of independent weekly Dzerzhinets in the central Ukrainian city of Dneprodzerzhynsk and the harassment of its editor-in-chief. Dzerzhinets was closed on January 30, after the Zavodskoi civil district court convicted the paper of defamation and incitement of religious and national hatred.…
February 18, 2007 Posted March 2, 2007 Anatoly Shinkarenko, 9 Kanal ATTACKED Two men violently attacked Shinkarenko, news director of the local television station 9 Kanal, in the eastern industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk. In late afternoon, Shinkarenko was leaving the café Gnom when two men began punching him, knockimg him off his feet, Shinkarenko told…