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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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 Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:53 pm Post subject: JOURNALISTS IN THE CROSSHAIRS.... |
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I am posting info. from the Committee to Protect Journalists and their statistics regarding the deaths of journalists around the world.......
www.cpj.org
When will we see the first journalist casualties from Lebanon or have we already?????
One wonders why they do it? This drive for the truth. Not exactly the kind of journalism that sits in a chair and writes opinion pieces. The real thing and it is their words we should follow. Not the armchair types that get all the paper time....read their small print, in the smaller articles and you can actually find out what is going on in the world. So many other journalists are just statesmen, people following the leaders of X, Y or Z country.....
Horrible in any case, how honourably these men and women die. Look how Iraq has become a killing field also....
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The Committee to Protect Journalists compiles details about journalists killed in the line of duty worldwide, issuing annual reports in January. The number of journalists killed each year�along with the locations and the circumstances�is the most widely cited barometer of press freedom.
� Details about every journalist killed on duty since 1992 can be found by following the links on this page.
� CPJ also compiles a statistical picture of the past decade to provide context and perspective. This data, updated each year, describes who is being killed and where. Here are some key data:
DEADLIEST COUNTRIES
1996-2005
Iraq: 60
Colombia: 28
Philippines: 26
Russia: 23
Sierra Leone: 16
India: 15
Bangladesh: 12
Serbia and Montenegro: 10
Afghanistan: 10
Mexico: 9
Algeria: 9
Brazil: 9
DEATHS BY YEAR
2005: 47
2004: 57
2003: 40
2002: 21
2001: 37
2000: 24
1999: 36
1998: 24
1997: 26
1996: 26
DECADE TOTAL: 338
DEMOGRAPHIC TRAITS
1996-2005
Female journalists: 19
Photographers and camera operators: 67
Radio journalists: 62
U.S. journalists: 9
DEATHS BY CIRCUMSTANCE
1996-2005
Murder: 238 (70.4 percent)
Crossfire in war: 67 (19.8 percent)
Reporting in other dangerous circumstances: 33 (9.8 percent) *
* Includes such things as street demonstrations and catastrophes.
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MURDER'S BACK STORY
1996-2005
Murders with impunity: 202 (84.9 percent) **
Kidnapped before slain: 29 (12.2 percent)
Threatened before murdered: 61 (25.7 percent)
** Cases in which those who ordered killings have not been arrested and prosecuted.
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Methodology
CPJ applies strict journalistic standards when investigating a death. We consider a case "confirmed" only if our research confirms or strongly suggests that a journalist was killed in direct reprisal for his or her work; in crossfire; or while carrying out a dangerous assignment. We do not include journalists who are killed in accidents�such as car or plane crashes�unless the crash was caused by hostile action (for example, if a plane were shot down or a car crashed trying to avoid gunfire).
We used only confirmed cases for our statistical analysis.
If the motives are unclear, but it is possible that a journalist was killed because of his or her work, CPJ classifies the case as "unconfirmed" and continues to investigate to determine the motive for the murder. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:31 am Post subject: |
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I've for the longest time been meaning to start just such a thread.
Thanks for doing so.
The risks journalists are made to endure in "getting the story out" to the rest of the world is something most people just don't think about that much. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:46 am Post subject: |
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| Someone ought to kill Jeff Rense and his supporters. Cause their business is enemy propaganda. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 5:00 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| Someone ought to kill Jeff Rense and his supporters. Cause their business is enemy propaganda. |
My God man, your words are consistently filled with such venom & hate.
Why not try taking a happy pill? |
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flip ant
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Location: He's got high hopes!
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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Seriously, who gives a rat's *** about reporters? I get REAL tired of these people being propped up as heroes when they are certainly not. And, please, can we stop this nonsense about the noble "getting the story out"? They are where they are to make a name for themselves...nothing more. No, journalists do not change the world. No, journalists are not heroes. No, journalists are not any different than the rest of us, they just get in front of a camera (or behind a camera) for career advancement. NOTHING ELSE. That liberal, sappy notion of the noble journalist just makes me ill.
Mod Edit: Please watch the language! |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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flipant,
The cornerstone of our "free" world is the journlist being able to go after a story and root out the truth..............you may throw scorn at it and see it all as "career advancement" but you are dead wrong.
Without people risking their career (yes, they do, as well as their lives), we'd have precious few of the liberties and choices in our lives.
And again I say, there are many types of journalists. I qualified my post to pay tribute to those ones who go the extra mile and who ask the deep questions and who go where there may be danger.......you again bring up your subconscious "anger/hatred" by stating "these people".........
Please reflect on what you have and WHY you have it......lots of it brought to you through the efforts of people trying to get a story and caring about the truth...
DD |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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flip ant
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Location: He's got high hopes!
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
flipant,
The cornerstone of our "free" world is the journlist being able to go after a story and root out the truth..............you may throw scorn at it and see it all as "career advancement" but you are dead wrong.
Without people risking their career (yes, they do, as well as their lives), we'd have precious few of the liberties and choices in our lives.
And again I say, there are many types of journalists. I qualified my post to pay tribute to those ones who go the extra mile and who ask the deep questions and who go where there may be danger.......you again bring up your subconscious "anger/hatred" by stating "these people".........
Please reflect on what you have and WHY you have it......lots of it brought to you through the efforts of people trying to get a story and caring about the truth...
DD |
The cornerstone of our "free" world? Are you kidding me? I'm not dead wrong but you live in a fantasy world (constructed by journalists mind you) if you really believe that it's anything more than career advancement.
WHY I have what I have? If you want a true cornerstone, then it's the soldiers who have truly bought our freedom with their blood not some journalist who tagged along with the ones really sticking their necks out. Are some journalists put in danger? Yes, but only because they are looking to get the anchor post not because they are interested in the truth or asking the "deep questions." And, yes, they are "these people." No anger attached, just a realistic view of a profession that likes to pat itself on the back and tell its members how brave and noble they are while trying to "change the world."
Hey, there are many people in many occupations that "go the extra mile". Plumbers, electricians, even the mailman/woman. You really ought to get over this romanticized notion of journalists. You're not in university anymore...or are you? |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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I won't reply. You obviously have no idea about how "reality" is created in this world (and there is no underlying reality but our perception of it) nor the importance of journalism to a functioning democracy and the freedom of speech. We are only free so far as we are aware, informed. We are free only so long as there is a conscience, a voice of dissent and those who would say, "this is wrong, look, look." ...............
You might consider my view of the enlightenment, along with the printing press and mass education as "fantasy" . Your short sighted view is much akin to the version of the moon being made of cheese.
Why do you think the 1st amendment is called "1st" ????? I could also point you to social commentators starting from Voltaire and Montaigne up through to de Tocqueville and Hume and along to Bertrant Russell and Camus, along even to the likes of Galbraith and Chomsky to mention a few who concur....... You are utterly without a leg to stand on with your disparaging arguement.
Please read.....or to quote Huxley from Brave New World......(a book about a place without dissent , without journalists and a world you wouldn't want to live in....).
�Almost all human beings have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted.� � Aldous Huxley
YOu don't even take it for granted, you don't even conceive of it...........
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CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF; OR ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.
The Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791
�Censorship reflects a society�s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime . . . .� � Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966)
�The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One�s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.� � Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
�First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.��Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition (00-795) 198 F.3d 1083, affirmed.
�Almost all human beings have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted.� � Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World
�Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.� � U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856�1941), Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927) |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:30 pm Post subject: |
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| igotthisguitar wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| Someone ought to kill Jeff Rense and his supporters. Cause their business is enemy propaganda. |
My God man, your words are consistently filled with such venom & hate.
Why not try taking a happy pill? |
It is the correct thing to be against Jeff Rense and his supporters.
The less they have O2 the better. |
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flip ant
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Location: He's got high hopes!
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| Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:21 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
I won't reply. You obviously have no idea about how "reality" is created in this world (and there is no underlying reality but our perception of it) nor the importance of journalism to a functioning democracy and the freedom of speech. We are only free so far as we are aware, informed. We are free only so long as there is a conscience, a voice of dissent and those who would say, "this is wrong, look, look." ...............
You might consider my view of the enlightenment, along with the printing press and mass education as "fantasy" . Your short sighted view is much akin to the version of the moon being made of cheese.
Why do you think the 1st amendment is called "1st" ????? I could also point you to social commentators starting from Voltaire and Montaigne up through to de Tocqueville and Hume and along to Bertrant Russell and Camus, along even to the likes of Galbraith and Chomsky to mention a few who concur....... You are utterly without a leg to stand on with your disparaging arguement.
Please read.....or to quote Huxley from Brave New World......(a book about a place without dissent , without journalists and a world you wouldn't want to live in....).
�Almost all human beings have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted.� � Aldous Huxley
YOu don't even take it for granted, you don't even conceive of it...........
| Quote: |
CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF; OR ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.
The Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791
�Censorship reflects a society�s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime . . . .� � Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966)
�The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One�s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.� � Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
�First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.��Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition (00-795) 198 F.3d 1083, affirmed.
�Almost all human beings have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted.� � Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World
�Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.� � U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856�1941), Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927) |
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OK, well thank you for your non-reply.
As with most believers in the heroism of journalists, you equate free speech with holding those who write stories or talk on camera as the same thing. I don't believe I said that they shouldn't be allowed to do whatever it is they do, I just don't think they deserve to be championed as some sort of cornerstone of freedom. They do a job. That's it. Sometimes that job puts them in harms way. Believe me, they wouldn't be there if it weren't for possible career advancement opportunities.
You surely must have been a journalism major to have such a warped view of a profession. When you start prattling on about 1st Amendment issues and holding journalists as a beacon of truth and making it one and the same, you have definitely lost touch with reality.
You threw out some quotes...I've got some of my own:
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Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive. ~G.K. Chesterton
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| I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust. ~Charles Baudelaire |
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| Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Nathaniel Macon |
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| Journalism - a profession whose business it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand. ~Lord Northcliffe |
This one is really good:
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| If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast. ~William Tecumseh Sherman |
But, this is my personal favorite:
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| I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. ~Gandhi |
You see? There are people who don't romanticize journalists and journalism nor do they wrap journalism up in the flag of free speech. They are two very separate things.
If you want to live in your world where journalists are the "cornerstone of our free world" then fantastic...you can choose to live a fantasy. I choose to live in a world of reality where journalists are just like everyone else and a very long way from being heroes. |
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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:33 am Post subject: |
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| flip ant wrote: |
Hey, there are many people in many occupations that "go the extra mile". Plumbers, electricians, even the mailman/woman. You really ought to get over this romanticized notion of journalists. You're not in university anymore...or are you? |
How many plumbers, electricians or mail (wo)men got killed for doing their job? |
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flip ant
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Location: He's got high hopes!
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| Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 1:07 pm Post subject: |
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| happeningthang wrote: |
| flip ant wrote: |
Hey, there are many people in many occupations that "go the extra mile". Plumbers, electricians, even the mailman/woman. You really ought to get over this romanticized notion of journalists. You're not in university anymore...or are you? |
How many plumbers, electricians or mail (wo)men got killed for doing their job? |
I would be willing to wager that more electricians have died on the job over the years than journalists. Electricians aren't members of their own fan club, though and not much is reported about an electrician who meets a horrible death. When a journalist dies, we are led to believe that a truly more valuable member of society has been lost. By who? Other journalists, of course. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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Joo,
Your distane for journalists, just (again and again) shows your own problems with anything that approaches "freedom" and your own fascist leanings. Your solution is to kill all who don't think like you --- journalists would top the list because it is their job to question, muckrack. You'd love a pretty peaceful white picket fence world but let me tell you -- it won't happen and in any case, it is a fantasy. Lots of horrors behind those curtains, always.
I'm not a journalism major. Anthropology. But I spent some time in the CIS, writing about the brave men who were trying to inform their citizens about corruption. Much like in the late part of the 19th and early 20th century in America. Many lost their lives trying to make their country better. I got informed about the world, how democracy works and how valuable it is -- to have a person who works to keep our world free, who seeks to bring all the corruption, abuse to light and let the ordinary Joe be protected. It was discussed on a thread here about Mike Wallace. He stated it categorically also, the vaunted place of real journalists in our society......
Yes, ordinary Joe. If it weren't for journalists, ordinary Joe's would even be worse off. Isn't it interesting how economic development indicators most closely follow those with the greatest freedom of the press? Why? Because they allow for freedom and even capitalism needs the freedom of exchange, laws of equality, a clean field to operate correctly for the benefit of most.
To end -- your quotes about how others "hate" journalists -- only proves my point of how valued they are. Any profession which does the dirty work for us, of course creates enemies...........and can be proud it does.
What next? You'll be saying kill all journalists? Or throw scorn at all those who try to be our eyes and ears in this fast changing world? Yeah, you'd rather have nobody there for those in power to do their dirty work, wouldn't you?
DD |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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If anyone is interested, here is a very short synopsis/story of ONE reporter killed. Misses a lot but also tells a lot . Gongadze left behind two 3 year old twin daughters who will never know their father.
It was in 2000 when the Orange revolution first started and because of Gongadze many Ukrainians had the courage to take to the streets, scream and protest. I was there, it was a battlefield unlike last year. Lots sent to prison, much tear gas and suppression but it set the stage for the present, more free Ukraine (though I have my qualms about this...)
He started the Ukraine's first internet newsite and paid for it with his life. Killed by president , on the president's orders. I wrote about it at the time and also had my own problems in the Ukraine. I have a photo of Gongadze on my wall, to remind me of my luck and also how valuable his spirit while he was here....
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ukraine404/thestory.html
Another story at http://www.ukemonde.com/gongadze/index.htm
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It was just a year ago, in November 2004, when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians poured into Kyiv's Independence Square in what became known as the Orange Revolution. They chanted and sang in subzero temperatures, waving their orange banners, protesting a fraudulent election and trying to force democratic change in the former Soviet republic.
At the center was Viktor Yushchenko, the reform presidential candidate, who became a folk hero in Ukraine after surviving a dioxin poisoning by his unidentified political opponents. His badly scarred and pockmarked face would become the defiant image of a nonviolent revolution that captured the world's imagination.
Soon after the Orange Revolution swept him into office, the new president held a press conference in which he pledged to end decades of corruption. He also vowed to solve the mysterious murder of a journalist that has haunted Ukraine for years.
"Resolving the case of Georgy Gongadze is very important," Yushchenko declared. "It is a political, moral and human obligation."
Georgy Gongadze was a crusading journalist whose death helped spark the Orange Revolution. But today, despite the new president's pledge, Gongadze's murder remains curiously unsolved.
The story starts on September 16, 2000, when Gongadze stepped outside an apartment building in Kyiv, was pushed into a waiting taxi and disappeared.
Gongadze had become a major opposition figure in Ukraine. A year earlier, on national television, he dared to confront then President Leonid Kuchma for failing to investigate an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate. Kuchma, an authoritarian ruler, was not used to being challenged in public. But Gongadze was fearless and kept after Kuchma and his cronies -- until the night he vanished.
Months after his disappearance, Gongadze's body was found in a shallow grave in a forest 80miles south of Kyiv. It was badly decomposed, burned and beheaded. What happened to Gongadze that night has remained buried for five years, but now political pressure is mounting to dig up the secrets of the old regime and solve his case.
Since her husband's death, Myroslava Gongadze has lived in exile in the United States with their two young children. Hoping that the new government in Ukraine would uncover the truth about her husband's assassination, she returned to her homeland this year, accompanied by FRONTLINE/World reporter Brian Knappenberger.
"This is my home, this is where my heart is," she tells Knappenberger. "When Georgy was killed we were all in danger. There is still danger here, but I hope things have changed."
Myroslava's first stop is Ukraine's Interior Ministry, where the new boss is a symbol of how much things have changed. Yuri Lutzencko is an old friend of Georgy and Myroslava's. As a former antigovernment protester in the Ukraine Without Kuchma movement, Lutzencko was beaten by the very police he now leads. Once in office, Lutzencko opened his own investigation into the Gongadze case. He tells Myroslava that the plot was much larger than anyone suspected, involving 40 officers.
"Two people in the car beat him with fists until he was nearly dead," Lutzencko tells Myroslava. "The officer in charge had finished him off by strangling him with his belt."
Lutzencko's work led to the arrest and upcoming trial of three militiamen who kidnapped and beat Gongadze. But he tells Myroslava that he hasn't been successful apprehending the people who ordered the crime.
In a government convoy, Lutzencko takes Myroslava to the forest where Gongadze's body was found. "The Gongadze murder is not the only crime against journalists and politicians in Ukraine," he tells her. "But the murder of Gongadze was the last straw. It happened in a moment when people couldn't take it anymore."
There is a cross next to the shallow grave where farmers found Gongadze's body. As she places flowers on the earth, Myroslava says, "I loved Georgy so much. ... I need to believe that this new government is different and that things have changed. If they don't put Kuchma on trial for this, then maybe the revolution wasn't real."
Kuchma denies any involvement in Gongadze's murder, despite startling evidence brought forward by one of his former bodyguards -- secret audiotapes recorded in then President Kuchma's office. On one tape, Kuchma is heard telling his interior minister, Yuri Kravchenko, to "do something" about Georgy Gongadze. Kuchma claims the tapes are a fabrication, but Myroslava and many others believe they are real and that they incriminate Kuchma's regime.
Now, at last, Myroslava has a chance to press her husband's case with the new president, the hero of the Orange Revolution, President Yushchenko.
"For years, there has been a huge question mark hanging over this country: Who killed Georgy Gongadze?" says Yushchenko. "This is a question of my honor, and I will resolve it regardless of how much it will cost me politically or personally."
But he provides few new details, and he spends most of his time trying to convince Myroslava to come back to Ukraine and support his reform efforts -- something she is not willing to do until her husband's case is solved.
Why hasn't President Yushchenko pushed more aggressively to solve the Gongadze case? One theory, espoused by Sergiy Teran, an authority on the case, is that in the heat of the Orange Revolution, when it was feared that Kuchma might unleash the army and police on the demonstrators or that the Russians might intervene to restore the old order, there was a deal. Teran tells Myroslava, "I believe that the international community gave guarantees to Kuchma that if Kuchma does not use force during the revolution, then he would not be prosecuted, regardless of what he did."
In a bizarre twist, Kravchenko -- the then interior minister heard on the secret tape being ordered by Kuchma to "do something" about Gongadze -- was found dead in his home the day before he was called in to testify about the murder. "The authorities called it suicide," says Knappenberger, "but Kravchenko had been shot in the head twice."
In her most important meeting, Myroslava confronts Kuchma's former chief prosecutor, Svanislav Piskun, the man in charge of investigating Kravchenko's suspicious suicide. He's the same man investigating the murder of her husband.
"Did Kravchenko really commit suicide?" Myroslava asks him.
"Absolutely," asserts Piskun. "For sure."
He offers a rambling discourse about people who have managed to kill themselves in odd ways. "Piskun is not entirely convincing about Kravchenko's death," comments Knappenberger.
Myroslava presses Piskun to authenticate the tapes recorded by Kuchma's bodyguard so that they can be used as evidence in a trial, but Piskun is evasive. Nevertheless, he tries to reassure her that he will keep the investigation going. "I try to nurture it as a flower," he says.
Although Gongadze's killers have not yet been brought to trial, his death has already had an impact on journalism in Ukraine. At Ukrainskaya Pravda, the Internet newspaper that Gongadze co-founded in the months before his death, a new generation of reporters is taking up where he left off. Journalists in Ukraine no longer have to fear the government they report on, says Olena Prytula, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Ukrainskaya Pravda.
"We are not in danger anymore. I think everyone can criticize everybody from the highest levels," says Prytula, who was a close friend of Gongadze's. "I think that our newspaper is like a monument to him."
But after weeks of meeting with top officials, Myroslava is leaving the country, worried that her husband's death won't be solved any time soon despite the political promises she has received from President Yushchenko and others.
After her departure, on the fifth anniversary of Gongadze's death, supporters held a candlelight vigil and demanded the firing of General Prosecutor Piskun, who has failed to bring the case to trial. This month, President Yushchenko removed Piskun from office -- a sign that the Orange Revolution may yet fulfill one of its key promises: finding and prosecuting those who killed Georgy Gongadze. |
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