EDITORIAL: Something's rotten in Kyiv (05/20/01)

EDITORIAL

Something's rotten in Kyiv

This newspaper does not make a habit of questioning the outright veracity of statements by government officials and will not do so here, but the recent assertions by Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs Yurii Smirnov and his first assistant, Mykola Dzhyha, just do not smell right.

There is a lack of evidence and explanation as given by the two state militia officials to believe that the young journalist Heorhii Gongadze (who would have been 33 years old on May 21) was killed by gangland thugs for an unpaid debt or by drug addicts in a robbery gone awry.

The presentation of two very different fact patterns a day apart in any other case but the Gongadze affair would probably have been laughed at as more evidence of the fumbling and stumbling "Keystone Kops" methods of Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs. But the comments made by Messrs. Smirnov and Dzhyha are now the official explanations of what happened to Mr. Gongadze, which is that his murder has no political underpinnings.

Such an assertion, without solid, well-presented, fact-based substantiation to support it, after all that has occurred over the last eight months, only casts a darker shadow over Ukrainian authorities and their involvement in the mysterious disappearance and ostensible murder of the Ukrainian journalist. And this is regardless of whether the Procurator General's Office does or does not accept their soundings, which it has indicated it does not.

It is the presentation of the results of this extremely critical and internationally sensitive murder case in such a matter-of-fact manner that is the cause for the concern.

Mr. Smirnov and Mr. Dzhyha did not attempt to lay out the investigation's conclusions based on a logical and convincing set of facts. Instead, they simply threw together certain assertions - the most emphasized being that the murder was not politically motivated, but merely a series of tragic events by criminal elements which ended with the murder of an energetic and promising Ukrainian journalist, one who just happened to be extremely critical of President Leonid Kuchma and working on a series of stories illuminating the corrupt practices of many of Ukraine's political elite.

Only a few weeks ago the Procurator General's Office had said the case was still wide open. On April 18 Minister Smirnov said the investigation had hit a dead end. Even on the day of the sudden announcement that the Gongadze murder had been solved, the prime investigator for the state militia was telling the attorney for Mr. Gongadze's mother that there were no suspects in the case as of yet. And now the case is solved.

The Procurator General's Office, which has final authority over the investigation and is supported by the two other central law enforcement bodies, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Service, has called the revelations premature and outside the competency of Internal Affairs Ministry officials.

But were the two "Keystone Kops" only playing a role when they made their dissonant announcements? Perhaps they were testing the waters to see whether they could effectively float such a determination as official. If repercussions, both domestic and international, were too strong, they could fall silent and the Procurator General's Office could rightly assert that the Ministry of Internal Affairs had acted out of bounds and out of step. If the reaction turned out to be relatively benign, voilà: case closed.

National Deputy Serhii Holovatyi, who has charged that law enforcement officials have been intimately involved in covering up the truth, also expressed doubt during a press conference on May 16 that law enforcement officials had divulged the facts as they know them. He said he believes the objective of the law enforcement officials in this case continues to be to obscure and confuse.

Mr. Holovatyi said he had predicted that the law enforcement officials would conveniently come to the conclusion they now have back in December when the case was still much fresher.

Meanwhile, Council of Europe rapporteur to Ukraine Hanne Severinsen said in Copenhagen that the announcements by the ministry officials were simply "strange."

In reality, neither of the two explanations of how Mr. Gongadze was eliminated makes much sense and leaves several unanswered questions. In Mr. Smirnov's accounting of the facts, the most obvious riddle is why the map of the location of Mr. Gongadze's grave would be so conveniently thrown in with the bodies.

And Mr. Dzhyha's account is full of ponderables, including why drug addicts in need of money to make a purchase to quench their addiction would have the time or inclination to murder someone and dispose of the body in an orderly manner.

Ukrainian law enforcement officials continue to deepen the hole that it seems they are digging for themselves in this very reckless rush to conclude the Gongadze case. There are those in Ukraine stating that this is just another example of the scorn and cynicism with which the current state leadership looks upon its citizens. Some say authorities have lost touch with the populace to the extent that they believe they can effectively explain away anything in the most primitive manner and society will passively accept it. The problem is that Ukrainian society seems to be doing just that.

We hope that the Ministry of Internal Affairs will give further details to explain its currently rather dubious conclusions on the Gongadze case and expect that the Procurator General's Office will clear the matter up when it finally comments on the current state of the case.

The Gongadze affair is still shrouded in uncertainty and confusion. Until the investigation becomes more transparent and the steps more understandable, the world will continue to view Ukraine's leadership with mistrust and that will bring no good to Ukraine. The nation, as well as the family of Mr. Gongadze, deserves honest resolution of this case so that both can move on.

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