ГУЛаг Палестины

numerous projects.

He was an elected democratic deputy from Kremenchuk, Poltava Oblast. He

had come from the neighboring town in Kirovohrad oblast, just across the

Dnipro River, arriving in the capital city of Kiev in the early 1980s to

obtain a college education.

And from then on, he gained popularity as the founder and host of

"Hart," one of the first serious investigative shows on Ukrainian

television, reporting on everything from Chornobyl to Shcherbytsky.

After he was elected a deputy to the Ukrainian Parliament in March 1990,

he was appointed vice chairman of the standing parliamentary Committee

on Glasnost and the Mass Media, a job he took very seriously, often

going to Moscow to discuss problems of disinformation in Ukraine, as

presented by central television.

But Vadim never forgot his first vocation - journalism - and he would

often join his colleagues, including a few of us foreign correspondents,

on the press balcony of Parliament during the sessions to give us some

inside news or highlights of his commission's work.

He was our friend, and with his death, our circle has been broken. Many

of us - Ukrainian journalists and foreign correspondents, as well as a

few of his close friends outside this journalistic fraternity - spent

last week trying to come to terms with the tragedy that has struck us.

We ca

reported that 8,000 people a year in the former Soviet Union die due to

their television sets exploding, we all believe that Vadim would have

survived this kind of accident.

We have gone through the story over and over. Most of us saw him in

Parliament on Wednesday afternoon; he was excited and invigorated by new

opportunities: he was applying for a National Foundation internship for

the spring in Washington, D.C., he was going to travel on business with

Ukraine's deputy prime minister. His dancing blue eyes were smitten

with the possibilities of new TV shows and programs in an independent

Ukraine.

None of us saw Vadim in Parliament on Thursday or Friday, February

13-14; he missed a few meetings he had scheduled on Friday.

Currently, there are many rumors flying around Kiev surrounding Vadim's

death, based on political, business and personal motivations.

Parliamentary committees have promised to work on an investigation,

although no special committee has been formed to investigate what many

democratic deputies, among them Les Taniuk and Stepan Khmara, have

labelled as murder. Some speculate that Vadim's TV work in Chornobyl

may have triggered an early death...

On Friday, February 14, Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper) in

Moscow ran an interview with Vadim on journalists' responsibilities and

cooperation between Moscow and Kiev.

"At this time, we (referring to Russian and Ukrainian journalists) can

be friends, if we are honest to the end. We are currently living in a

commonwealth, the root of the word is found in the word "druh,"

friend... We will never become true friends, until we journalists

understand that we are the ones who can, who have the responsibility to

stop our peoples from total degradation, from the catastrophe that can

occur between our peoples," he said. "If we ca

being journalists. We will become persons who today do their work and

tomorrow, one by one, are destroyed."

Vadim's deep sense of responsibility, his courage and commitment to the

truth will always be admired by his friends and colleagues. And we are

all committed to learning the truth.

Given the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, I can only

hope that his last interview prophecy did not become self-fulfilling.

Mr. Safer, you travelled to Ukraine looking for stories of persecution and violence

against Jews and Russians, you failed to find the evidence, but you broadcast the story

anyway. All the while, you were surrounded by stories of persecution and violence

against Ukrainians, but that plentiful evidence you ignored. In other words, you went

to Ukraine not to discover its reality, but to confirm your prejudice. You played the

role not of journalist, but of propagandist. Given the opportunity to make a

contribution toward protecting the lives of journalists in Ukraine by broadcasting the

story of Vadim Boyko, you declined. Showing anything on 60 Minutes that might win

sympathy for Ukrainians was contrary to your plan.

Had you managed to find a Jewish member of parliament and television broadcaster who had

died in Ukraine under mysterious circumstances, then you would have had one small piece

of evidence for the anti-Ukrainian conclusions that you offered. Had you managed to

find a Russian member of parliament and television broadcaster who had died in Ukraine

under mysterious circumstances, then you would have had one small piece of evidence for

the anti-Ukrainian conclusions that you offered. However, you found neither of these

things. In Ukraine, death under mysterious circumstances is reserved for prominent

Ukrainians, which conclusion you had no interest in broadcasting.

Below, I identify four incidents which I have brought to your attention either in three

earlier letters, or in the present one. Although the first two cases occurred before

your broadcast of 23Oct94, and the second two occurred after, all serve to support the

conclusion that within today's Ukraine, it is Ukrainians who are the targets of

violence:

Date of my letter

Subject of my letter

Date of Attack

Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom

15May99

Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk?

April 1979

30Jun99

Who murdered Vadim Boyko?

February 14, 1992

Violence that you might have caused by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom

09Apr99

Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko?

Summer 1995

17May99

Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?

July 7-8, 1997

As the first two of the above attacks occurred prior to your 23Oct94 broadcast, then

your fault is that you neglected to report them. And as the second two attacks occurred

after your 23Oct94 broadcast, then your fault is that you may have helped cause them.

That is, your 23Oct94 broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, served to demonstrate to

Ukraine's assassins not only that violence against Ukrainians would go unreported in the

world press, but also that even as Ukrainians continued to be butchered, the world press

would portray them - the victim Ukrainians - as themselves butchers. You did not

yourself wield any knife or pull any trigger or tighten any garotte, but you informed

those that were predisposed to do so that they might expect impunity if they did. For

this reason, I consider you to have blood on your hands, some of it Maksym Tsarenko's,

and some of it Volodymyr Katelnytsky's.

Lubomyr Prytulak

cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney,

Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal.

Morley Safer Letter 12 01Jul99 Who murdered Borys Derevyanko?

The plainest moral to be drawn from the Derevyanko-Hurvits story is that when a

muckraking Ukrainian editor takes on a corrupt Jewish politician, the Ukrainian editor

ends up dead.

July 1, 1999

Morley Safer

60 Minutes, CBS Television