Turning the pages back... January 25, 2001 (01/25/04)

Turning the pages back...

January 25, 2001

"Tapegate," the scandal surrounding video and audio recordings that allegedly implicated President Leonid Kuchma and a coterie of high-level government officials in the disappearance of a Ukrainian reporter and the subsequent cover-up of the crime, became an international affair on January 25, 2001, when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe condemned the lack of freedom of expression in Ukraine, and agreed to organize an independent investigation into certain aspects of the case.

Our Kyiv Press Bureau reported that after a session in Strasbourg, France, devoted to Tapegate and freedom of expression in Ukraine, PACE refrained from sanctioning the country for its less than pristine human rights record of late, but voted to take responsibility for an independent analysis of the audiotapes and to give their author political asylum. PACE also agreed to conduct an independent DNA analysis of the body found at the beginning of November 2000 in the town of Tarascha, Kyiv Oblast, which Ukrainian authorities have said may be that of Heorhii Gongadze, a radio journalist who had vanished, literally without a trace, four months earlier, on September 16, 2000.

As Tapegate continued to unravel, anti-Kuchma demonstrations under the slogan "Ukraine Without Kuchma" expanded to more regions of Ukraine, only to be suppressed by state militia in many areas. While demonstrations in Cherkasy and Ternopil continued with dozens of pup tents clustered in the respective city centers, in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Rivne local officials either banned demonstrations or dispersed protesters. Meanwhile, in Kyiv, the organizers of the "Ukraine Without Kuchma" movement found that the site of their pre-New Year demonstrations was now blocked by a barricade erected around Kyiv's central square. Officials said the barriers were erected in preparation for reconstruction of the square in time for the 10th anniversary of Ukraine's independence scheduled for that August.

Source: "Tape scandal becomes international affair as PACE urges independent investigation," by Roman Woronowycz, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, February 4, 2001, Vol. LXIX, No. 5.

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