Journalist's death raises suspicions
KIEV -- The head of a Ukrainian radio station that was considering broadcasting US-funded Radio Liberty programming died in a car crash, police said yesterday. The death came the same day that another station transmitting the programs was pulled off the air.
The death Wednesday of Yuriy Chechyk -- combined with Radio Liberty's losing its second outlet in Ukraine in a month -- raised suspicions of foul play amid complaints that Ukrainian authorities are rolling back media freedoms.
"Yesterday, we witnessed the killing of journalists again in Ukraine," Mykola Tomenko, the head of parliament's free press committee told lawmakers yesterday.
He demanded that Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych appear before parliament today to explain what the government is doing to stop journalist deaths and "the closing of mass media every day." The prime minister's office said he would be out of the country.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States was concerned by Ukrainian authorities' attempts "to limit public access to independent news and information" and said the decision to shut down broadcasters was "an assault on democracy."
Chechyk, the director of Radio Yuta in Poltava, was killed when the car he was driving collided head-on with another car, said police in the city 215 miles east of the capital, Kiev. Ukraine's roads are in poor condition and the country has a high number of crashes, but there were concerns this was not an accident.
Ukraine's media environment has been tense since the 2000 death of Heorhiy Gongadze, an Internet journalist who crusaded against high-level corruption. His decapitated body was found in a forest outside Kiev. Opposition groups allege President Leonid Kuchma was involved in Gongadze's killing. He denied it.
Chechyk was en route to Kiev to meet with executives from Radio Svoboda, Radio Liberty's Ukrainian service, about rebroadcasting Radio Liberty's shortwave programs on the more-accessible FM band, said Radio Svoboda chief editor Hanna German.
A private FM station that had rebroadcast Radio Liberty programming for five years canceled the service last month after making vague demands -- possibly under pressure from the government -- for format changes.
Radio Liberty programming then was picked up by private Radio Kontinent, but authorities pulled the station off the air Wednesday after just five days of airing the programs.
Police said Chechyk's car made a U-turn just before the crash. The driver of the other car was hospitalized with multiple injuries and his passenger lost a leg, police said.
"We were shocked. We were waiting for him. . . . He'd said it was very important to him to work with us," German said, adding that she did not rule out foul play but that she hoped such a thing was not possible.
"If this were a democratic country, journalists could work freely . . . but this is an authoritarian state. Every day you open the paper to read another journalist arrested, another station closed," said Volodymyr Boiko of the Institute for Mass Information, affiliated with the Paris-based media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders.
"We're fighting for every city, for every village," the director of Radio Liberty's Ukrainian service, Aleksander Narodetsky, said.
Radio Kontinent, which also ran programs by the Voice of America, the BBC, the Deutsche Welle, and Polish Radio, was pulled off the air Wednesday by police who seized station equipment.
Thomas Dine, the director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, denounced the closure in a statement from Washington, calling it "a blatant act in suppressing factual news and information."
Kuchma's administration has come under criticism from Western governments, human rights groups, and journalists who accuse him of muzzling the press.
Numerous public figures have died in car accidents in recent years, leading to speculation of plots to eliminate government opponents or key sources of evidence that could incriminate corrupt officials.
Last year, opposition lawmakers launched an investigation into the death of former lawmaker and anticorruption activist Anatoliy Yermak in a car crash.
Valeriy Malev, Ukraine's top arms export official, died in a collision in 2002.
