August 21, 2000 His Excellency Leonid Kuchma President of Ukraine vul. Bankivska 11 Kyiv, Ukraine Via Fax: 011-380-44-293-7364/291-6161/293-1001 Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by the recent assault on Valentina Vasilchenko, a freelance journalist from the city of Cherkassy who was apparently beaten up in retaliation for a series of articles…
By Chrystyna Lapychak Wars in Yugoslavia and Chechnya dominated regional and international headlines in 1999. The conflicts raised the journalists’ death toll in the region and prompted crackdowns, as governments blocked access to war zones and engaged in propaganda campaigns.
Each year on World Press Freedom Day (May 3), CPJ announces its list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal in the ruthless suppression of press freedom. They were singled out for their unrelenting and…
Over the past several years, Ukrainian press freedom has deteriorated to such an extent that Ukraine, unlike even neighboring Belarus, now lacks any genuinely independent major news media. From a barrage of violent assaults in 1996Ð97 to relentless bureaucratic pressures and lawsuits aimed at bankrupting them, media outlets have been forced into the arms of…
August 6, 1999 His Excellency Leonid Kuchma President of Ukraine vul. Bankivska 11 Kyiv, Ukraine Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is greatly troubled by your government’s recent suspension of all broadcasts by four independent television stations on the Crimean peninsula. On July 26, your government’s frequency inspection agency ordered the state-run Crimean…