Viktor Haynes shoud be BEHEADED
01/17/2003 | peter byrne
Preface to the book BEHEADED
By Viktor Haynes
Copywrited
July 3, 2002
On the eve of the year 2000 (Y2K), pundits predicted doomsday scenarios. Millions of old computer chips that could not read 2000 would cause some airplanes to fall from the sky, nuclear power stations to shut down or worse, and traffic lights not to work. We were on schedule to enter the new century with major catastrophes.
I waited for Armageddon with my wife and children in the center of the ancient capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. The Western governments had placed Ukraine on top of its list of countries where Y2K disasters were to occur. My fellow Americans, especially those at the embassy, expecting the worse, had mostly evacuated the country in fear of a major disaster. The memory of Chornobyl was on their mind. We stood only 100 kilometers from the last of the Chornobyl reactors which was not in the best of technical state. Making two documentaries at the Chornobyl station, I knew how that it worked at the margins of safety. I braced myself for the moment when according to western computer consultants, some of Ukraine’s 14 nuclear reactors and others in neighboring countries might simultaneously shutdown causing unpredictable events to take place. Would we be witnesses to another Chornobyl scale disaster?
The clock stuck midnight and the streetlights seemed to be brighter than ever. The only bang was the enormous barrage of fireworks that lit the night sky and equaled any WWII bombardment. The roar of a 100,000 strong crowd in Independence Square accompanied it. Once again, a doomsday scenario predicted by western experts about Ukraine came to nothing.
But something awful did happen in the year 2000 in Kyiv. A bright young journalist - energetic and relatively prominent, but to his closest friends a bit too self-centered - first had disappeared and then found beheaded.
Why? No one seemed to know. I was determined to find out why, when, how and, most important, who was responsible for this ghastly act.
I must confess I was pursuing a personal quest after failing to discover the two other disappearances. Since 1989, when the USSR began to collapse, I had come to Kyiv on numerous occasions either to write articles or to make TV documentaries. On my first working visit in August 1989 to attend the first Rukh (Movement) congress of oppositionists, I met one of its leading organizers, Mykhaylo Boychyshyn. He at once attracted me with his courtesy and openness. I saw him again in 1991, when he was managing the presidential campaign for the Rukh candidate and former Soviet political prisoner Vyacheslav Chornovil. I packed into a minibus with him, the candidate, a cameraman and the two drivers who doubled as bodyguards, and off we went on their campaign trail across Ukraine. On a shoestring budget, Boychyshyn managed to organize a campaign that took on the might of the former Soviet elite, who were batting for their candidate, the former communist party ideologue Leonid Kravchuk.
In the quest for votes, we walked into a hornet’s nest, the closed Soviet naval base in Sevastopol. There Boychyshyn organized a meeting with sailors on a battle ship, much to the annoyance of the officers. The election concluded with the former communist winning the presidential elections, but Boychyshyn’s candidate come second with 26 per cent of the vote.
In 1994 Boychyshyn disappeared from the center of Kyiv. There has not been any trace of him since.
During the 1991 presidential campaign, we also stayed in Odesa as guests of the council head of the city’s port district, Edward Hurvits, and his astute deputy Ihor Svoboda. By 1998, Hurvits was Odesa’s mayor, and under siege with assassination attempts and killings by a subordinate of Ukraine’s president, Ruslan Bodelan, who wanted his job. One of the victims was Svoboda. On Feb. 28, 1998, armed men seized him. He also has never been seen again.
Soon after Gongadze disappeared on Sept. 16, 2000, I decided to pursue the investigation to the end. I did not know him personally, but certainly, I knew about him, as did most journalists who followed the 1999 presidential elections. Georgi played a prominent role in the elections. He had the enviable record of putting questions to all thirteen presidential candidates on a national TV program, and was the only one to have angered the incumbent President Kuchma with a question. During the two-month campaign, he even had his own twice-weekly radio program interviewing politicians and journalists.
Unlike the previous disappearance, on this occasion I was on the spot to conduct an investigation. On the day he disappeared, I had almost worked for two years as a journalist in Kyiv and knew my way around the labyrinths of Ukrainian society.
But what made this investigation possible was the information provided by two brave individuals. Firstly, it was the president’s security guard who secretly recorded him because he felt crimes were being committed in the president’s office. Secondly, it was the local coroner who was the first to examine Gongadze’s headless body. He refused to dispose of it as instructed, and thus DNA tests were possible which showed the body belonged to the missing journalist. Thanks to them, those responsible will not succeed in getting away with murder.
By Viktor Haynes
Copywrited
July 3, 2002
On the eve of the year 2000 (Y2K), pundits predicted doomsday scenarios. Millions of old computer chips that could not read 2000 would cause some airplanes to fall from the sky, nuclear power stations to shut down or worse, and traffic lights not to work. We were on schedule to enter the new century with major catastrophes.
I waited for Armageddon with my wife and children in the center of the ancient capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. The Western governments had placed Ukraine on top of its list of countries where Y2K disasters were to occur. My fellow Americans, especially those at the embassy, expecting the worse, had mostly evacuated the country in fear of a major disaster. The memory of Chornobyl was on their mind. We stood only 100 kilometers from the last of the Chornobyl reactors which was not in the best of technical state. Making two documentaries at the Chornobyl station, I knew how that it worked at the margins of safety. I braced myself for the moment when according to western computer consultants, some of Ukraine’s 14 nuclear reactors and others in neighboring countries might simultaneously shutdown causing unpredictable events to take place. Would we be witnesses to another Chornobyl scale disaster?
The clock stuck midnight and the streetlights seemed to be brighter than ever. The only bang was the enormous barrage of fireworks that lit the night sky and equaled any WWII bombardment. The roar of a 100,000 strong crowd in Independence Square accompanied it. Once again, a doomsday scenario predicted by western experts about Ukraine came to nothing.
But something awful did happen in the year 2000 in Kyiv. A bright young journalist - energetic and relatively prominent, but to his closest friends a bit too self-centered - first had disappeared and then found beheaded.
Why? No one seemed to know. I was determined to find out why, when, how and, most important, who was responsible for this ghastly act.
I must confess I was pursuing a personal quest after failing to discover the two other disappearances. Since 1989, when the USSR began to collapse, I had come to Kyiv on numerous occasions either to write articles or to make TV documentaries. On my first working visit in August 1989 to attend the first Rukh (Movement) congress of oppositionists, I met one of its leading organizers, Mykhaylo Boychyshyn. He at once attracted me with his courtesy and openness. I saw him again in 1991, when he was managing the presidential campaign for the Rukh candidate and former Soviet political prisoner Vyacheslav Chornovil. I packed into a minibus with him, the candidate, a cameraman and the two drivers who doubled as bodyguards, and off we went on their campaign trail across Ukraine. On a shoestring budget, Boychyshyn managed to organize a campaign that took on the might of the former Soviet elite, who were batting for their candidate, the former communist party ideologue Leonid Kravchuk.
In the quest for votes, we walked into a hornet’s nest, the closed Soviet naval base in Sevastopol. There Boychyshyn organized a meeting with sailors on a battle ship, much to the annoyance of the officers. The election concluded with the former communist winning the presidential elections, but Boychyshyn’s candidate come second with 26 per cent of the vote.
In 1994 Boychyshyn disappeared from the center of Kyiv. There has not been any trace of him since.
During the 1991 presidential campaign, we also stayed in Odesa as guests of the council head of the city’s port district, Edward Hurvits, and his astute deputy Ihor Svoboda. By 1998, Hurvits was Odesa’s mayor, and under siege with assassination attempts and killings by a subordinate of Ukraine’s president, Ruslan Bodelan, who wanted his job. One of the victims was Svoboda. On Feb. 28, 1998, armed men seized him. He also has never been seen again.
Soon after Gongadze disappeared on Sept. 16, 2000, I decided to pursue the investigation to the end. I did not know him personally, but certainly, I knew about him, as did most journalists who followed the 1999 presidential elections. Georgi played a prominent role in the elections. He had the enviable record of putting questions to all thirteen presidential candidates on a national TV program, and was the only one to have angered the incumbent President Kuchma with a question. During the two-month campaign, he even had his own twice-weekly radio program interviewing politicians and journalists.
Unlike the previous disappearance, on this occasion I was on the spot to conduct an investigation. On the day he disappeared, I had almost worked for two years as a journalist in Kyiv and knew my way around the labyrinths of Ukrainian society.
But what made this investigation possible was the information provided by two brave individuals. Firstly, it was the president’s security guard who secretly recorded him because he felt crimes were being committed in the president’s office. Secondly, it was the local coroner who was the first to examine Gongadze’s headless body. He refused to dispose of it as instructed, and thus DNA tests were possible which showed the body belonged to the missing journalist. Thanks to them, those responsible will not succeed in getting away with murder.
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2003.01.17 | peter byrne
JV Koshiw should be BEHEADED
The book has been published and will be launched on Wednesday, January 22, 2003, when it will be available to be purchased from Artemia Bookshop onwww.artemiapress.co.uk
http://www.byrne.bigmir.net/temniki.htm
But what made this investigation [!!!!!!???????] possible was the information provided by two brave individuals. Firstly, it was the president’s security guard who secretly recorded him because he felt crimes were being committed in the president’s office. Secondly, it was the local coroner who was the first to examine Gongadze’s headless body. He refused to dispose of it as instructed, and thus DNA tests were possible which showed the body belonged to the missing journalist. Thanks to them, those responsible will not succeed in getting away with murder.