Regime Purges Kyiv TV After Closing Four Crimean Stations

Volodymyr Syvkovych, Chairman of the STB Administrative Council, claims that Serhiy Zubrytsky, First Deputy Head of the Tax Administration, told him in a private telephone conversation that he had been instructed to block the channel's bank accounts and that he did as ordered.

On Friday August 27 STB television channel management called a news conference at UNIAN and made a statement on the tax authorities' illegal conduct. According to channel president Prykordonny, their bank account was closed for reasons formulated as «non-presentation of documents relating to the accrual and payment of taxes,» which is absolutely improper, because no documents are specified. The STB leadership maintains that all the documents the tax people could require under current law had been duly submitted.

Journalists attending the news conference were handed copies of a detailed list of the government inspections the channel has sustained since May 1999, including the Sanitary and Epidemics Station, State Telecommunications Inspectorate, License Chamber, Oversight and Regulation Administration, district and city tax inspectorates, and district tax police. The Day has on more than one occasion commented on what is actually behind all this over attentiveness of the regulators: primarily, STB's contract to air legislative plenary sessions after the government- controlled channel UT-1 stopped so doing. Apparently, transmissions from Parliament's session to open this September are the last thing the President's team wants to see, and the same is true of all STB's more or less unbiased programs dealing with Leonid Kuchm

STB executives further claimed that the closure of their account with Ukreksimbank actually means an end to their broadcasts in Ukraine. At the same time, one could notice that both Mr. Syvkovych of the channel's administrative council and Mr. Prykordonny were restrained in their references to the authorities, most likely still hoping to resolve the problem without open confrontation. It was stated, in part, «We are being closed not because we do not support Leonid Kuchma's policy, but because we elucidate the current President's policy the ‘wrong' way.»

Whether they manage to keep STB on the air using this tactic will become clear in the immediate future. Unfortunately, the experience of election campaigns in Ukraine shows that those in bad odor with the regime are disposed of if worst comes to worst, no matter how carefully they watch their step or try to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, let alone in case of open confrontation — although the latter always manages to dot all the i's and cross the t's, including the electorate. While in the 1994 presidential campaign only one TV studio, Gravis, was closed, one could cite dozens of examples of the current regime's arbitrary actions against dissenting media. It suffices to recall Dnipropetrovsk's Channel 11, four Crimean television-radio companies, as well as the newspapers Polityka and Dnepropetrovskaya Pravda .

The Day expresses its solidarity with STB and hopes that the Journalists' Union of Ukraine, special Verkhovna Rada committee, and the media wishing to retain their reputation with the people will have something to say on how the freedom of speech is being implemented in Ukraine.

PS: All officials of the Radiansky District Tax Inspectorate (Deputy Head included) contacted by The Day