August 5, 2016

Journalists at risk

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On July 22 in Kyiv, colleagues and the public bid farewell to a well-known and courageous investigative journalist who had worked in Belarus, Russia and, most recently, Ukraine. Pavel Sheremet, 44, was killed two days earlier by a car bomb in the Ukrainian capital. Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry said the bomb, which was placed in or under the vehicle, was detonated by remote control. Authorities have promised a thorough investigation, and the FBI has been enlisted to assist.

As our Kyiv correspondent Mark Raczkiewicz pointed out, this was the most high-profile murder of a journalist in Ukraine since Heorhii Gongadze was slain in 2000. Colleagues said the Sheremet killing was clearly meant to intimidate journalists in Ukraine. “Pavel Sheremet wasn’t simply an ordered hit. He was a sacred sacrifice,” said National Deputy Mustafa Nayyem, formerly a journalist for Ukrayinska Pravda, where Mr. Sheremet worked. “One can kill many ways – quietly, insidiously without… drawing attention to the process.” But the car he was driving exploded in the city center and “with such theatricality, …without a shot being fired… so that no one would doubt that it’s not just a murder, but a political assassination,” Mr. Nayyem observed.

Katya Gorchinskaya of Hromadske.tv said the murder was part of a “pattern that over the past year or more has unfolded against journalists.” Writing on Facebook, she said: “The inaction, tacit and open support of those in power leads to an escalation of all sorts of attacks on journalists. Pasha’s [Mr. Sheremet’s nickname] murder wasn’t random. It killed the belief that we have freedom of speech. The dark times are here.”

Melinda Haring, editor of the UkraineAlert at the Atlantic Council, wrote on the council’s website: “It would be easy to dismiss Sheremet’s murder as an outlier. Unfortunately, it’s anything but. His death is merely the most drastic example of the steady deterioration of press freedom in Ukraine in recent months.” Ms. Haring went on to note three cases of journalists beings attacked or threatened in Ukraine during the month of July alone. And she pointed out that the website Myrotvorets had twice leaked the personal information (contact information, home addresses, etc.) of over 4,700 journalists and their colleagues – cameramen, producers, stringers, translators and drivers – who were working in eastern Ukrainian regions under the control of pro-Russia separatists and in Russia, thus putting them all at risk.

“If Ukraine’s leaders are serious about press freedom, they will move quickly to solve this case and bring to justice those responsible for silencing Sheremet’s powerful journalistic voice,” Ann Cooper, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Journalism and former executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote on the CPJ website.

Unfortunately, when one looks at the Gongadze case, there is little cause for optimism. Gondgadze was a founder of Ukrayinska Pravda, the very same media outlet with which Sheremet was affiliated. To this day, those who ordered his murder have not been punished.

As of this writing, it remains unclear who ordered or committed the murder of Pavel Sheremet. But it is clear that the investigation must be serious, transparent and expeditious. Nothing less than the future of Ukraine and its people are at stake.

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