Georgiy Gongadze

Georgiy Ruslanovich Gongadze (Ukrainian: Георгій Русланович Ґонґадзе, Heorhiy Ruslanovych Gongadze; Georgian: გიორგი ღონღაძე; 21 May 1969 – 17 September 2000) was a Ukrainian journalist of Georgian origin who was 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. During the Cassette Scandal, audiotapes were released on which Kuchma, Volodymyr Lytvyn and other top-level administration officials are allegedly heard discussing the need to silence Gongadze for his online news reports about high-level corruption. Former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko died of two gunshots to the head on 4 March 2005, just hours before he was to begin providing testimony as a witness in the case. Kravchenko was the superior of the four policeman who were charged with Gongadze's murder soon after Kravchenko's death. The official ruling of suicide was doubted by media reports.

Three former officials of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's foreign surveillance department and criminal intelligence unit (Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov and Oleksandr Popovych) accused of his murder were arrested in March 2005 and a fourth one (Oleksiy Pukach, the former chief of the unit) in July 2009.A court in Ukraine sentenced Protasov to a sentence of 13 years and Kostenko and Popovych to 12-year terms March 2008 (the trial had begun January 2006) for the murder. Gongadze's family believe the trial had failed to bring the masterminds behind the killing to justice. No one has yet been charged with giving the order for Gongadze's murder.

Gongadze's widow Myroslava Gongadze and their two children received political asylum in the United States and have lived there since 2001.

Gongadze was awarded the title Hero of Ukraine by President Viktor Yushchenko on 23 August 2005.

 

Career

A memorial plate in Kiev listing journalists who were killed while reporting.

Born in Tbilisi, at the time the capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, Gongadze was the son of a Georgian politician father and a Ukrainian nurse mother. He was educated at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv 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 Odessa. 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.

Disappearance and investigations

Gongadze disappeared on 16 September 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.

Gongadze tried to be like a normal reporter, he didn't try to be a hero. But in Ukraine it's a brave activity being a journalist.

Serhiy Leshchenko, Ukrayinska Pravda editor (September 2004).

Two months later, on 3 November 2000, a body was found in a forest in the Taraschanskyi Raion (district) of the Kiev Oblast (province), some 70 km (43 mi) outside Kiev. The corpse had been decapitated and doused in dioxine, apparently to make identification more difficult; forensic investigations found that the dioxine bath and decapitation had occurred while the victim was still alive. The Russian-edited, Russian-language Ukrainian newspaper Sevodnya ("Today") reported that Gongadze had been abducted by 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. 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 23 June 2006 Gongadze's mother refused to accept the remains offered as it was not the body of her son. While visiting Kiev in July 2006, Gongadze's widow Myroslava emphasized that the funeral had now become a solemn family issue and the date of the funeral would soon be appointed.

On 28 November 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."

In September 2001, the American detective agency Kroll Inc., contracted by Labor Ukraine, had carried out a six-month investigation and concluded that then president Leonid Kuchma had nothing to do with the murder of Gongadze.

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.

In November 2005, upon complaint of Gongadze's widow, the European Court of Human Rights found Ukraine to violate right to life, right to effective remedy and prohibition of degrading treatment.

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. 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. 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". 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.

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.

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.

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.

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly adopted on 27 January 2009 Resolution 1645 on the investigation of crimes allegedly committed by high officials during the Kuchma rule in Ukraine – the Gongadze case as an emblematic example. This Resolution calls on the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office to use all possible avenues of investigation to identify those who instigated and organised the murder of Giorgiy Gongadze.

Arrests and trials

See also: Myroslava Gongadze v. Ukraine Arrest and trial of three former policemen and death of Kravchenko

On 1 March 2005, Yushchenko announced that the journalist's suspected killers had been arrested. 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). 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.

On 4 March, 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. Kravchenko left an alleged suicide note: “My dear ones, I am not guilty of anything. Forgive me, for I became a victim of the political intrigues of President Kuchma and his entourage. I am leaving you with a clear conscious, farewell.”

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 (14 April 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.

The trial against the three former policemen charged with the killing of Georgiy Gongadze started on 9 January 2006. The other main suspect, ex-police officer, Oleksiy Pukach was believed to have fled abroad and therefore charged but not on trial. No-one had been charged for ordering the murder. On the day the trial started Gongadze's 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".

In mid March 2008, the three former police officers were sentenced to prison for the actual act of murder of Gongadze. Mykola Protasov was given a sentence of 13 years, while Valeriy Kostenko and Oleksandr Popovych were each handed 12-year terms. But so far the investigations have failed to show who ordered the murder.

Arrest and trial of Oleksiy Pukach

On 22 July 2009, Oleksiy Pukach, one of the chief suspects, was arrested in Ukraine's Zhytomyr Oblast. The former chief of the main criminal investigation department at the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's foreign surveillance unit had lived in the house of Lidia Zagorulko who had told her neighbours that Pukach was the brother of her dead husband and that he was a former sea captain.Pukach had lived there with his real second name and original documents. At first it was reported and that he had implicated senior political figures in the murder and was ready to show the place where the journalist's head was hidden, but this was denied two days after his arrest by his lawyer. According to the lawyer "for the time being" Pukach was not intended to provide this information to the investigators. Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko refused to comment whether Pukach named those who ordered the murder or not, saying a "secret investigation" was underway.

On 28 July 2009 Ukrainian media reported that the remains of Gongadze's skull were found near Bila Tserkva, in a location specified by Pukach. According to the Prosecutor's General Office they did find fragments of a skull there that may belong to Gongadze.

A request by Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, to replace deputy prosecutor general Mykola Holomsha and investigator Oleksandr Kharchenko, because of their insufficient professionalism and because they were unable to withstand political pressure and speculation surrounding the case,as rejected on 30 July 2009 A request by Gongadze to replace Pukach's lawyer was also denied on 28 October 2009.

On 20 November 2009, Gongadze's mother Lesya gave consent to an examination of fragments of the skull found end-July 2009 under the condition she could take fragments of the skull for private DNA examination she plans to conduct at a private foreign laboratory after the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election. In September 2010 she stated that in her opinion, the fragments of the skull found in July 2009 had nothing to do with her son.

On 3 December 2009 Pukach's detention was extended by two months.

On 6 December 2009 Mykola Melnychenko accused Volodymyr Lytvyn of ordering the murder of Gongadze in 2000. Melnychenko offered no proof to back up the claim. A spokesperson for Lytvyn dismissed the claims as part of the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election campaign.

The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine plans to complete its investigation into the case of Oleksiy Pukach by the end of the summer of 2010.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko stated on 17 June 2010 that skull fragments found near Bila Tserkva in July 2009 were those of Gongadze.

On 14 September 2010, Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General issued a statement stating that prosecutors had concluded that former Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko had ordered Pukach to carry out the murder, and stating that Pukach had confessed to the murder. According to Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, "Kravchenko had had no grounds for such actions", she believes that several people ordered the killing of the journalist. According to Georgiy Gongadze's mother, Lesya, the statement was an attempt attempt by the Prosecutor General's Office to excuse itself for its inactivity. On 16 September 2010 Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament Volodymyr Lytvyn stated that the investigation into the murder of Gongadze confirmed his innocence in this crime.

Pukach's trial, on allegations he strangled and beheaded Gongadze, began on 7 July 2011. It was closed to the public.

On 30 August 2011, Pukach claimed that former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma was the one who ordered the murder. During the trail he also alleged that Kuchma's head of his Presidential Administration) Volodymyr Lytvyn (at the time of the trail Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) and member of the Verkhovna Rada) also ordered the murder of Gongadze.

In December 2011 the Pechersk District Court refused to accept witness testimony of Mykola Melnychenko as he has not been authorized to gather evidences for a committing crime, while conducting recordings in a cabinet of the President of Ukraine.

On 29 January 2013 Pukach was sentenced to a life imprisonment by the Pechersk District Courty of Kiev. Oleksiy Pukach also was stripped of his rank "General of Militsiya". The court ruled Pukach had murdered the journalist on orders from (former) Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, who was seeking a career promotion.

Charges against Leonid Kuchma

The General Prosecutor of Ukraine's Office canceled its resolution to deny opening of criminal cases against former President Leonid Kuchma and other politicians within the Gongadze-case on 9 October 2010.

On 24 March 2011 Ukrainian prosecutors charged Kuchma with involvement in the murder. The decision prompted mixed reaction among the public. Former Prime-Minister and the leader of the main opposition party Yulia Tymoshenko argued that Kuchma's arrest was no more than a PR stunt designed to distract people from their economic woes and prop up President Viktor Yanukovych's sagging popularity.[ Another theory was that Yanukovych was driven by the desire for revenge on Kuchma, who often humiliated Yanukovych and refused to use force to stop the Orange Revolution in 2004. Political analysts suggested that Yanukovych's "display of justice" could also be aimed at winning credit from the West, which has criticised him for usurping power and squeezing out democracy.

A Ukrainian district court ordered prosecutors to drop criminal charges against Kuchma on 14 December 2011 on grounds that evidence linking him to the murder of Gongadze was insufficient. The court rejected Mel'nychenko's recordings as evidence. Gongadze's widow Myroslava Gongadze appealed against this decision one week later.

First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Renat Kuzmin claimed 20 February 2013 that his office had collected enough evidence confirming Kuchma's responsibility for ordering Gongadze's assassination. Kuchma's replay the next day was: "This is another banal example of a provocation, which I've heard more than enough in the past 12 years".

Remembrance

Georgiy Gongadze monument in Kiev

Gongadze remains unburied, as Lesya Gongadze, the journalist's mother, has refused to have the body interred until the head has been found.

President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Gongadze the title Hero of Ukraine on 23 August 2005.

In June 2005 Kiev's Industrialnaya Street was renamed Georgy Gongadze Street. August 2008 a monument to journalist Gongadze and all journalists killed for their professional activities was opened in Kiev in a park in Chervonoarmiyska street, but Gongadze's mother, Lesya Gongadze, was against erecting a monument until the investigation is completed. She repeated her wish "to remove the monument to Gongadze" after a meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on 22 June 2010, she also added her discontent with "political forces" holding "PR campaigns" regarding the Gongadze murder case.

A literary token of respect for the work and courage of Gongadze is to be found in the novel for young adults, "Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa" (Spire Publishing, 2008, ISBN 1-897312-72-5) by James Watson. The book is dedicated to Giya Gongadze, but the theme, of a persecuted journalist and the impact of his revelations about government corruption on his football-playing daughter, Natasha, and his son Lonya, has strong similarities to Gongadze's own fate.

In Kiev and Lviv ceremonies marking the disappearance of Gongadze where held on 16 September 2010 (ten years after his disappearance).

Timeline of reporters killed in Ukraine

Under former President Leonid Kuchma opposition papers were closed and several journalists died in mysterious circumstances.

Year Date Event 1995 April Volodymyr Ivanov of Slava Sevastopolya, in Sevastopol 1996 May Ihor Hrushetsky in Cherkasy 1997 13 March Petro Shevchenko, correspondent for the daily Kyivskiye Vedomosti in Luhansk, Ukraine, is found hanging in an abandoned building in Kiev. He had co-authored articles about disputes between the mayor of Luhansk and the local branch of the Ukrainian Security Services. 11 August Borys 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.[60] 1999 16 May Ihor 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. 2000 16 September Georgiy Gongadze co-founded a news website, Ukrayinska Pravda, killed in the Taraschanskyi Raion (district) after being kidnapped. 2001 24 June Oleh Breus publisher of the regional weekly, XXI Vek, was shot dead by two gunmen outside his home in Luhansk. 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. 7 July Ihor Oleksandrov, director of the private TV and radio station TOR in Sloviansk, died of injuries sustained on 3 July, 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. Four former policemen where sentenced to 7-13 years imprisonment for fraud during the criminal case involving Oleksandrov in March 2012. 2002 27 November Mykhailo Kolomiets, co-founder of Ukrainian News Agency found dead hanging on a tree in Belarus. 2003 14 December Volodymyr Karachevtsev, 47, deputy editor-in-chief of Kuryer newspaper, was found dead in his home in Melitopol]. 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. 2004 3 March 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. 2010 August Vasyl Klymentyev, a Ukrainian investigative journalist, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Novy Stil based in Kharkiv. He went missing in August and is presumed dead. He had been investigating local corruption.

 

Name spelling disambiguation

Note that the pronunciation and sometimes spelling of Gongadze's name may differ following the phonetics of different languages. The original Georgian name, pronounced Georgi Gongadze in Georgian, became Георгій Гонгадзе (Heorhiy Honhadze) and sometimes Георгій or Ґія Ґонґадзе (Heorhiy or Giia Gongadze) in Ukrainian, and Георгий Гонгадзе (Georgiy Gongadze) in Russian. Ukrainian officials often refer to him as Heorhiy Honhadze, as per the pronunciation of the letter Г (H) in Ukrainian, but not of the letter Ґ (G). This pronunciation is also used in the common dialect of southern Russia.

After a recent linguistic reform, Ukrainians have recovered the letter Ґ (Ghe with upturn) for G, a letter which had been banned during the Soviet Union. The letter Ґ, which is now used for G and just named "Ghe" in Ukrainian, was re-introduced after the independence of Ukraine, instead of the letter Г (used for G and named "Ghe" in Russian, but now named "He" and used for H in Ukrainian). It had been banned by the Soviet linguistic reform of 1933 as being "non-Ukrainian" (possibly because the Ukrainian letter followed more closely the model of the Gamma letter of the Greek Alphabet, by not adopting the very distinctive letterform of the Russian letter "Ghe" used in cursive and italic styles).

Hence the more correct spelling of Gongadze's last name in Ukrainian (Ґонґадзе), according to the Georgian pronunciation. Some sources also refer to him as Georgy Gongadze.

See also

• Myroslava Gongadze, widow of Georgiy Gongadze.
• Orange Revolution
• Ukrayinska Pravda
• Olena Prytula, co-founder of Ukrayinska Pravda
• Freedom of the press in Ukraine
• Vasyl Klymentyev, journalist who disappeared in 2010

Footnotes and references