"Ukraine without Kuchma" protests intensify (02/11/01)

"Ukraine without Kuchma" protests intensify

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - More than 10,000 people from many regions of Ukraine marched through this capital city on February 6 waving the blue-yellow national emblem and chanting "Kuchma Out" and "Ukraine without Kuchma" before holding a mass really at which leaders of various political stripes called for the resignation of President Leonid Kuchma. The politicians and demonstrators charged that the president is involved in the disappearance of a Ukrainian journalist and the ensuing cover-up.

The demonstration was marred by scuffles between local militia, Communists who tried to disrupt the rally and paramilitary youth who took part in the protests, as well as an attack by about 300 other youths from a heretofore unknown organization called the Anarchist Syndicate on a tent city re-erected in the city center.

The demonstrations were another in a series of actions organized by a coalition of political groups active under the aegis of "Ukraine without Kuchma," a movement that has gained further momentum in the last week as new audio recordings have surfaced of alleged conversations between President Leonid Kuchma and various subordinates outlining or implying criminal conspiracies and behavior by Ukrainian officials at the highest levels.

The daylong demonstrations began early in the morning as columns of marchers entered Kyiv from various regions by train, bus and car. Some protesters accused law enforcement officials of harassing them on the way to the capital by deflating bus tires and delaying passenger trains, allegations the state militia has denied.

After gathering in the city center, where approximately three dozen pup tents had sprung up in the last week manned by an eclectic mix of members of leftist parties and far-right paramilitary outfits, the crowd, which grew to about 7,000 by lunch time, marched through the main streets of the city, passing by the Verkhovna Rada building and the presidential administration building before returning to the city's main thoroughfare, the Khreschatyk.

While they were marching, about 300 members of the Anarchist Syndicate, many clad in black and wearing masks and arm bands, descended on the tent city, where several dozen of the anti-Kuchma demonstrators remained. The first wave of anarchists passed near the tents hooting and hollering protests against the tent city inhabitants, while carrying black banners bereft of inscriptions. As they moved away, a second wave quickly followed, swinging at people and tents with the poles of their banners, leveling several of each, before dispersing when more paramilitary personnel raced to the scene.

Viktor Haiduk, a member of one of the paramilitary organizations, the UNA-UNSO, and a witness to the event, said he recognized several individuals as being students at the local police academy. That allegation, however, is yet to be verified.

"The anarchists came through and began pushing old ladies and then took down some tents," explained Mr. Haiduk. He alleged that some of the so-called anarchists were carrying pistols.

The anti-Kuchma demonstrators also scuffled with Communists, several hundred mostly middle-aged and pension-aged men who tried to join the rally only to be blocked by the paramilitary types. Local militia separated the two sides while roughing up several of the younger anti-Kuchma demonstrators.

The "Ukraine without Kuchma" demonstrators included representatives of many center and rightist political parties, but for the most part consisted of supporters of the Socialist Party, Batkivschyna Party, Ukrainian National Rukh Party and the Sobor Party, as well as three paramilitary organizations, Schyt Batkivschyny, (Shield of the Fatherland), UNA-UNSO and the Tryzub organization.

The thousands of protesters listened to speakers from across the Ukrainian political spectrum, from Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko to Stepan Khmara of the Republican Conservative Party, call for a new president and a new system, but were most taken by an appearance by the mother of the journalist whose disappearance has brought Ukraine to the brink of chaos.

In a voice breaking with emotion, Lesia Gongadze tearfully told the throng, which responded to her appearance with a rousing cheer, that they must stand together.

"If we don't support one another, if we don't stick together, one by one they will destroy us, as they did my son," said Mrs. Gongadze.

The audio and video recordings which have become the central focus of the allegations that the Ukrainian president is at the center of the Gongadze affair and have given the impetus for the "Ukraine without Kuchma" movement, are currently in Vienna for expert evaluation at the International Press Institute.

President Kuchma and his law enforcement officials have changed tactics in recent days and have increasingly indicated that they acknowledge as authentic the various digital recordings supposedly made by a presidential bodyguard, Mykola Melnychenko, who is believed to be in hiding somewhere in Europe.

Lawmaker Serhii Holovatyi said on February 6 that President Kuchma told him during a private meeting the day before that he acknowledges that his office was bugged and conversations recorded.

"He told me, 'I admit that Major Melnychenko recorded me in this office,'" explained Mr. Holovatyi. After divulging Mr. Kuchma's revelation, Mr. Holovatyi told The Weekly's correspondent that he had no desire to comment further on president's remark. He said he would simply report the statement to the Ukrainian Parliament's ad hoc committee investigating what the press is referring to as "Tapegate."

On February 2 the Procurator General's Office had officially changed a position that it had maintained for weeks - that the tape recordings allegedly made by Mr. Melnychenko are complete fabrications - and issued a press release that acknowledged the voices are authentic. However, officials continued to maintain that the tapes still are a fabrication because the conversations had been manipulated.

"As has been determined through an investigation, which was sustained by a court-ordered expert examination done by highly qualified foreign experts, the audio recordings of conversations representing government officials were composed from individual words and fragments, which in itself makes them falsifications," stated the press release.

The revelation regarding the authenticity of the voices, if not the conversations, has only further shrouded in mystery to what extent, if at all, the president is implicated in the disappearance and apparent death of journalist Heorhii Gongadze. Mr. Gongadze disappeared in September 16, 2000, after leaving the apartment of the editor-in-chief of the Internet newspaper he founded several months earlier, which had published much information critical of the Kuchma administration and various politicians close to the president.

Nearly two months later a body was found in a shallow grave near the town of Tarascha outside Kyiv, which was subsequently identified through DNA analysis as having a 99.6 probability of belonging to the missing journalist. Nonetheless, Ukraine's Procurator General Mykhailo Potebenko has refused to officially acknowledge the body as that of the journalist, citing the minuscule possibility that it is not.

There have been calls for the resignation of all of the country's chief law enforcement officials, but mostly for the removal of Mr. Potebenko, who many in the opposition believe is either manipulating evidence or simply bumbling the highly public investigation. In the latest accusation of manipulation and intimidation, Mr. Holovatyi told journalists on January 31 that Ukrainian officials at the Ukrainian Consulate in Munich had harassed Ihor Stelmach, the person whom he had asked to handle a German DNA analysis of the body found at Tarascha, after he had been ordered to appear for a visa check. Mr. Holovatyi said Mr. Stelmach was told that German authorities wanted to question him about a drug smuggling case in which he allegedly is a suspect.

When Mr. Stelmach, who appeared at the Consulate with a German citizen, asked who the German authorities were and why they hadn't contacted him themselves, he was hustled about a room and told he was to be questioned by Ukrainian prosecutors into his part in the tape scandal. Mr. Holovatyi said the student then grabbed the order that the Consulate representative held and ran for the door, where his German associate waited to aid the escape. The order that Mr. Stelmach made off with was a request from the Ukrainian Procurator General's Office to the Security Service of Ukraine to find Mr. Stelmach in Germany.

On February 5, officials at the Procurator General's Office clarified rumors that Mr. Potebenko had been relieved of his duties and stated he was on vacation until January 16. The officials denied that the leave of absence was actually for 45 days and that it would be followed by Mr. Potebenko's resignation. Coincidentally or not, the procurator general was scheduled to report to the Parliament at some point that week on the current state of the Gongadze investigation. Many of Mr. Potebenko's prime critics are lawmakers.

Also on February 5, as columns of protesters from Cherkasy, Zhytomyr and Rivne marched toward Kyiv, Ukraine's Minister of Defense Oleksander Kuzmuk told a government television interviewer that he has until now and in the future will continue to defend the president, the country and the nation, in what seemed a subtle attempt to remind those who might have been planning widespread civil disorder that Ukraine still has a military force.

Also that day, the first crack may have appeared in what until now has been an impenetrable facade of pro-Kuchma support by the most prominent lawmakers and politicians, when former President Leonid Kravchuk, a leading figure in the Parliament's majority coalition, as well as in the powerful Social-Democratic Party (United), told an assembly of representatives of 41 parties who had backed President Kuchma's re-election in 1999 that the president must listen to the advice of others, not simply that which comes from subordinates who have pledged loyalty to him or his office.

"Those who have pledged loyalty to him could just as quickly pledge loyalty to someone else," said Mr. Kravchuk.

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