Leonid Kuchma Letter 32 05-Jan-2004 What Next for a Predator of Press Freedom?

Leonid Kuchma Letter 32 05-Jan-2004 What Next for a Predator of Press Freedom?

Leonid Kuchma, George-Soros-installed President of Ukraine, and Predator of Press Freedom

"Some 20 journalists have been killed since the country declared its independence in 1991." � Reporters Without Borders

05 January 2004

Leonid Kuchma, President
vul. Bankivska 11
Kyiv, 252005
Ukraine

Leonid Kuchma:

No one can be surprised to find you among the forty Predators of Press Freedom identified on the Reporters Without Borders web page shown below. If you feel that this collection of forty is not such a bad lot, it should be pointed out that some of its members are less culpable than others, and that you do not fall into the less culpable subset. Goh Chok Tong of Singapore, for example, is on the list along with you � but zero journalists have been killed in Singapore, compared with twenty in Ukraine. Further adding to your personal culpability is that you are the leading suspect in one of these murders � that of Heorhy (Georgi) Gongadze in 2000 � and is also that you bear ultimate responsibility for none of these twenty murders having been solved, and for none of the murderers having been punished.

Although a bloodless suppression of press freedom might have allowed you to retire from politics without encumbrance, the twenty murdered journalists, along with your failure to bring their murderers to justice, are matters that can be neither forgotten nor forgiven. The choice before you, then, is twofold:

begin your retirement as a fugitive from justice, with an ultimate result not quite as dramatic as that of Saddam Hussein, but rather perhaps more like that of Pavlo Lazarenko, or
win the respect and admiration of the world, and go down in history as the benefactor who finally unwound the chains from the necks of the Ukrainian people.

Yes, you still have open before you the path of righteousness � which is to make a full disclosure of everything you know about organized crime and government corruption, and which is to turn prosecution witness against all the torturers and butchers and plunderers that today oppress the Ukrainian nation, and which is to contribute toward solving all twenty journalist murders. In exchange, you will be able to negotiate your own immunity. If you do this, you can end your days tending your garden and playing with your grandchildren rather than occupying the prison cell beside Pavlo Lazarenko's.

Lubomyr Prytulak

The page below is based on the Reporters Without Borders compilation of the world's forty leading Predators of Press Freedom page at www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=1085, where links exist which take the reader to considerable supplementary and collateral material which cannot be accessed from the version below.

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Ukraine Leonid Kuchma
President

image 129 x 159 - 3.5 ko In 2002, 62% of the country's journalists claim to have been victims of political censorship. In fact, all major television networks in the country, as well as every press agency and the regional media, are censored by the President's staff, who are not very fond of criticism. Some 20 journalists have been killed since the country declared its independence in 1991. Incidents of physical violence are constantly rising, especially in rural areas. Despite pressures from the Council of Europe, the state of press freedom in Ukraine deteriorated in 2002. None of the investigations into murders or missing persons have been solved, and the high-ranking government officials that are party to these crimes benefit from total impunity.

Predators
They order violations of press freedom and have others do the deed. They might be president, cabinet minister, army chief, Guide of the Revolution or leader of an armed group. All have the power to jail, kidnap, torture and even kill journalists. Because they have faces, we should learn to recognize these predators the better to denounce them.

Armed Islamic militants AFGHANISTAN, ALGERIA, BANGLADESH, KASHMIR, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, etc.	Altaf Hossain Chowdhury BANGLADESH	Alexandre Lukashenka BELARUS	Fran�ois Compaoré BURKINA FASO
Than Shwe BURMA	The kidnapping mafia CHECHNYA	Hu Jintao CHINA	Carlos Casta�o COLOMBIA
M. Marulanda, N. Rodríguez Bautista COLOMBIA	Fidel Castro CUBA	Joseph Kabila D.R. CONGO	Teodoro Obiang Nguema EQUATORIAL GUINEA
Issaias Afeworki ERITREA	Meles Zenawi ETHIOPIA	Jean-Bertrand Aristide HAITI	Ali Khamenei IRAN
Ariel Sharon ISRAEL	Nursultan Nazarbayev KAZAKHSTAN	Khamtai Siphandon LAOS	Moammar Gaddafi LIBYA
Gyanendra Shah Dev NEPAL	Comrade Prachanda NEPAL	Kim Jong-il NORTH KOREA	Palestinian Security Forces PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
Vladimir Putin RUSSIA	Paul Kagame RWANDA	Abdallah al-Saud SAUDI ARABIA	Goh Chok Tong SINGAPORE
Security Forces SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES	ETA SPAIN	Mswati III SWAZILAND	Bashar el-Assad SYRIA
Gnassingbé Eyadéma TOGO	Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali TUNISIA	Hilmi Ozkok TURKEY	Saparmurat Niyazov TURKMENISTAN
UKRAINE	Islam Karimov UZBEKISTAN	Nong Duc Manh VIETNAM	Robert Mugabe ZIMBABWE

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