Is Basket Three Coming Back?

The Helsinki Accords, which established the Commission (later Organization) on Security and Cooperation in Europe, proved quite a headache for late Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev, who gained recognition of postwar European borders only by agreeing to include Basket Three with their human rights provisions into the agreements. Former US President Jimmy Carter never stopped invoking those provisions in defense of Soviet dissidents, and lives were saved as a result. Now the question is whether those same obligations can be used to save freedom of expression in Ukraine, which as an OSCE member is bound by them.

We have more than once been forced to point out the shaky nature of freedom of the press in Ukraine. The new presidential decree On Supplementary Measures to Improve Information Activity, which the experts believe is designed to increase official influence on local media outlets, and above all the recent eviction of Kievskie Vedomosti from its editorial offices show that the time has come for the international community to start invoking Ukraine’s treaty obligations to (among other things) respect freedom of expression in the mass media. Kievskie Vedomosti is what in the US would be called a feisty working-class newspaper, and even its competitors would miss it. In this sense the recent fact-finding mission by OSCE experts to Kyiv is this week’s best news.

The crux of this country’s many problems is that doing what needs to be done so often runs counter to the interests of those in a position to do it. This means that if Ukraine is going to evolve into the modern, prosperous, European, and law-governed state everyone wants (in theory, at least), it will have to be forced to do so from outside. The OSCE representatives most certainly got an earful from Kyiv journalists. Let us hope they do not mince words in their report on the conditions under which the Ukrainian mass media have to work and that the OSCE recalls just what Basket Three provides and acts accordingly. Otherwise, nobody here doubts that there will be more cases like the Kievskie Vedomosti eviction.