Reporters Without Borders Ask Prosecutor General to Protect Ukrainian Journalist

The Institute of Mass Information, the Ukrainian mission of Reporters Without Borders international organization to defend human rights, turned to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Mykhailo Potebenko with an open letter containing a request to protect Yaroslav Tkachivsky, editor-in-chief of Tyzhnevyk Halychyny [Galicia Weekly] in Ivano-Frankivsk. Reporters Without Borders had repeatedly received messages from Mr. Tkachivsky with complaints about blackmail, intimidation, and threats of violence. A case was opened against Tkachivsky and other journalists of his publication seeking to redistribute its assets in favor of Halychyna, a newspaper belonging to the oblast council, the letter says. All attempts by Tyzhnevyk Halychyny editors to appeal the actions by the oblast council in court had thus far had no result: such appeals had gone unheard. In Mr. Tkachivsky’s opinion, the pressure on him is caused by the fact that he has appealed actions of Ivano-Frankivsk oblast council and law enforcement agencies in court. He also reported that his wife Oleksandra had been brutalized by the local militia, about his being placed under surveillance, a series of searches in his private home, and his being repeatedly interrogated. Mr. Tkachivsky officially addressed the prosecutor general seven times, the letter goes on, asking him to study the case, but got no response. “I don’t want my name to be nineteenth on that memorial plaque at the Independent Journalists’ Union of Ukraine. In that case I would not need help anymore,” Yaroslav Tkachivsky writes in his letter to the Reporters Without Borders, Volodymyr DENYSENKO, The Day, reports.