Kievskiye Viedomosti reporter found dead on outskirts of Kyiv (03/23/97)

Kievskiye Viedomosti reporter found dead on outskirts of Kyiv

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - A regional reporter on Ukraine's mass-circulation newspaper Kievskiye Viedomosti was found dead in suspicious circumstances, one of the daily paper's editors said on March 14. "Our reporter Petro Shevchenko was found hanged in a remote part of Kyiv last night," Serhii Rakhmanin, Viedomosti's deputy editor, told Reuters.

The Associated Press reported that police said Mr. Shevchenko, 43, was found hanging in a boiler house on the outskirts of Kyiv. Mr. Shevchenko had been reporting from the eastern industrial city of Luhansk on the Russian border and last month published several pieces on a conflict between the local mayor and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

An American human rights group, Committee to Protect Journalists, said it was joining with Ukrainian journalists to demand that President Leonid Kuchma investigate the death. Although police ruled the death a suicide, colleagues said they believed Mr. Shevchenko had been murdered.

Kievskiye Viedomosti Editor-in-Chief Yevhen Yakunov told the Associated Press that Mr. Shevchenko complained that, after the stories were published, security service agents pursued him. A spokesman for the SBU said the agency had nothing to do with Mr. Shevchenko's death.

Deputy Editor Rakhmanin said there was no clear sign of violence against the reporter but added, "Nothing is clear at the moment. ... We will insist that the investigation should take into account the possibility of a political explanation for the incident."

"We will also demand a criminal case be opened and that a suicide scenario is not just assumed," he said.

Respublika reported that Mr. Shevchenko's colleague Serhii Kiseliov said at a March 14 press conference in Kyiv that, from his telephone conversations with Mr. Shevchenko, he understood that the reporter had very important information which he had intended to bring to the newspaper's editorial offices in Kyiv. Mr. Kiseliov said he believes that is why Mr. Shevchenko is now dead. He added, "All who oppose the special services should fear for their lives."

Reuters reported that no official data have been gathered on violence against journalists, but independent surveys quote 15 percent of Ukrainian journalists as saying they have feared for their lives after publishing political stories. They also say about 80 percent of journalists in Ukraine feel there is political censorship in Ukraine.

The executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, William Orme Jr., wrote to President Kuchma that "Unless a death like this is carefully investigated and the findings made public, a climate of intimidation can persist for reporters."

The full text of the letter sent on March 14 by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists - which lists on its board prominent journalists from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Time magazine and other news media outlets - to President Kuchma follows.

* * *

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to express profound concern about the death of Pyotr [sic] Shevchenko, correspondent for the daily newspaper Kievskiye Viedomosti, whose body was found hanged yesterday at approximately 7 p.m. in an abandoned building in Kyiv. Shevchenko, Kievskiye Viedomosti reporter for the Luhansk region, had co-authored a series of articles published in recent weeks about disputes between the mayor of Luhansk and the local branch of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the KGB's successors.

According to colleagues, Shevchenko called the editorial offices of Kievskiye Viedomosti in early March to express his fear of reprisal from the SBU in Luhansk, a town of thriving privatization ventures near the Russian border about 700 kilometers from the capital of Kyiv. In late February, local SBU officers had held a press conference in Luhansk to denounce the journalists' series of exposes as "biased."

An editor of Kievskiye Viedomosti told CPJ that Shevchenko arrived in Kyiv by train on March 12 at 9 a.m. and was met by the newspaper's messenger. He did not pass anything on to the courier and said he planned to be in the editorial offices later that day. Although Shevchenko was supposed to be staying with friends in Kyiv, as far as is known, he did not make any phone calls to them or to colleagues at the paper and as yet there is no trace of his movements. His body was found on the evening of March 13 by children playing near an empty boiler room in an abandoned building. Police said the death had occurred the morning of March 13. There were no apparent signs of struggle, and cash and valuables were found on the body.

The editorial board of Kievskiye Viedomosti as well as other Ukrainian journalists and a local press freedom group fear that Shevchenko's death may not have been a suicide and may have involved foul play. At a press conference in Kyiv today, journalists called upon President Kuchma to investigate personally the death of Shevchenko as well as other unexplained deaths of journalists in Ukraine in recent years. The Ukrainian reporters also said that the prosecutor's office, which has opened an investigation of the hanging, claimed to have found a suicide note from Shevchenko allegedly containing a farewell to his family and an indication that he was under pressure from the SBU. However, Shevchenko's colleagues have not been able to see the note and cannot confirm its existence or its contents.

Editors at Kievskiye Viedomosti, a popular tabloid frequently featuring crime and political scandals, believe that they objectively covered recent disputes between Luhansk Mayor Aleksei Danilov, a young, reform-minded former businessman, and the local department of the SBU. One editor said the paper had also reported incidents of harassment of Danilov alleged to have been perpetrated by the SBU.

As an organization devoted to the defense of its colleagues around the world, CPJ is highly alarmed at the deaths of journalists involved in controversial reporting in Ukraine. CPJ has written to you on several occasions in the past on unsolved murders in 1995 and 1996, such as the case of Ihor Hrushetsky of Cherkasy. To date CPJ has not received any response.

At this time CPJ is unable to confirm that Shevchenko's death was not a suicide, or that his death was related to his professional activities as an investigative journalist. Nevertheless, we join our colleagues in Kyiv in urging you to undertake personally a thorough investigation of Shevchenko's death as well as the unexplained murders of other Ukrainian journalists. Unless a death like this is carefully investigated and the findings made public, a climate of intimidation can persist for reporters, particularly in Shevchenko's case, where his stories involved the SBU.

Whether Shevchenko was driven to commit suicide by harassment over his articles, or whether he is the victim of foul play by forces not necessarily related to the Ukrainian government, his story is indicative of a chronic pattern of intolerance of the media's scrutiny of public officials which must become a top concern for the Ukrainian leadership. CPJ urges you to give these matters your prompt attention.

| Home Page |