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[Taras Kuzio <t.kuzio@utoronto.ca>]

Ukraine: Thousands Demonstrate Against Kuchma In Kyiv, Around The World

By Jeffrey Donovan

Thousands of protesters defied the law and took to the streets of Kyiv
Monday, demanding the resignation of President Leonid Kuchma. But there were
also symbolic rallies in many other countries in support of Ukrainian
democracy and in memory of slain journalist Heorhiy Gongadze and other
high-profile victims of unsolved murders in Ukraine.

Washington, 17 September 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Thousands of protesters in Kyiv
and around the world marked the second anniversary of the disappearance of a
prominent journalist by demanding at rallies on Monday the resignation of
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.

As thousands of people converged on central Kyiv to urge Kuchma to resign or
call early elections, symbolic protests were also staged in New York,
Washington, Paris, London, Brussels, Budapest, Berlin, Lisbon, and Prague.
The rallies, which each had about 20 people, paid tribute to journalist
Heorhiy Gongadze and other Ukrainian reporters and politicians believed to
be the victims of politically motivated murders.

The body of Gongadze, who often wrote about alleged official graft, was
found outside Kyiv in November 2000. A national scandal was sparked in the
fall of 2001 after the appearance of audio tapes recorded by a former member
of Kuchma's security detail appeared to implicate the president in the
killing.

In possibly the largest demonstration in Ukraine since independence in 1991,
up to 25,000 protesters converged on central Kyiv in defiance of a court
order banning rallies in the downtown part of the capital. Protesters waved
banners saying "No to Kuchma's regime," and they called on the president to
step aside. "Kuchma out! Kuchma out! Kuchma out!" they shouted.

Kyiv television stations, which shut down in the morning for what
authorities said was routine maintenance, later resumed roadcasting. But
residents called the simultaneous station blackout unprecedented and likely
motivated by a desire to keep the protests off television screens.

Speaking at the rally, Ukrainian Communist Party Chairman Petro Symonenko
said the protesters have several demands. "Our demands are: early
presidential elections, Kuchma's removal from power, a change in our system
of government, changes to the constitution, [and] a new
proportional-representation election law," Symonenko said.

At the rally in Washington, Gongadze's widow Myroslava told a small group of
protesters in front of the Ukrainian Embassy that Ukraine's future as an
independent democracy will be jeopardized if Ukrainians do not speak out
against the killings.

Myroslava Gongadze has political asylum in the U.S. and works as a freelance
journalist for RFE/RL. She also presided over a memorial on Sunday at
Washington's monument to Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's national poet, for her
husband and other prominent figures who have died or disappeared in
unexplained circumstances, such as opposition leaders Vadym Boyko in 1992
and Mykhaylo Boychyshyn in 1994. "I often think that had Ukrainian society
reacted immediately to the death of Boyko or the disappearance of
Boychyshyn, perhaps the horrible list of the dead would have been much
shorter. I do not want my husband's death to go in vain; I want Ukrainian
society to learn from its mistakes," Myroslava Gongadze said.

In conjunction with the commemorative events, some 300 prominent
international scholars and activists have signed a letter urging U.S.
President George W. Bush to make Washington's relations with Kyiv
conditional on democratic and human rights progress in Ukraine. Myroslava
Gongadze delivered the letter yesterday to the White House.

Those who signed it include renowned scholars Francis Fukuyama of Johns
Hopkins University, Michael McFaul of Stanford University, and Anders Aslund
of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

At Sunday's requiem, statements by prominent U.S. lawmakers were read out,
including from Christopher H. Smith (Republican, New Jersey), co-chairman of
the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the
Helsinki Commission.

Smith said that no progress has been made on the investigations into any of
Ukraine's high-profile murders despite steady pressure from the Helsinki
Commission, U.S. Congress, the State Department, the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and other
international bodies.

Although Kuchma has denied any wrongdoing, Smith concluded that the lack of
investigative progress "has only served to fuel speculation about official
involvement" in the murders.

That conclusion was echoed by the New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists, or CJP. In a statement last Friday, the CPJ said it was
dismayed by the lack of progress on the Gongadze case, adding that,
"President Kuchma's government continues to obstruct the official inquiry."

Next week, Myroslava Gongadze will take that same message to the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. The court is expected to
address the issue of her husband's death, and Gongadze said she will make an
appeal that the court clearly state that Ukrainian investigators are not
doing enough to uncover the truth and that the murder must be considered a
crime against humanity. "If those who perpetrated these killings are not
brought to justice, then murder and terror against those who are deemed
'inconvenient' in Ukraine will continue until all who are not afraid to
think are completely wiped out," Myroslava Gongadze said.

While in Strasbourg, Gongadze will also address the human rights
subcommittee of the Council of Europe, which has launched its own probe into
Ukraine's stalled investigation into her husband's death.