Ukrainian journalist dies of injuries

Violence against journalists triggered street protests

By Ukraine analyst Stephen Dalziel

An Ukrainian journalist has died from injuries sustained when he was attacked in his office earlier this week.

This latest case will turn the heat up on the Ukrainian president once again

Ihor Oleksandrov was beaten with baseball bats in the stairwell of the building which houses the offices of his TV station, TOR, on Tuesday.

He fell into a coma, and was pronounced dead from brain damage on Saturday morning.

Earlier this week, the Ukrainian news agency reported that Oleksandrov had been involved in exposing cases of local corruption and organised crime.

The human rights group Reporters Without Frontiers condemned the attack and called for a thorough criminal investigation.

Unpunished attacks

The secretary-general of the group, Robert Menard, said that violence against the press in Ukraine was the worst in Europe.

Mr Kuchma denies the allegations

Oleksandrov was the eleventh journalist to be killed in Ukraine in the last five years.

The most high profile case has been that of Georgy Gongadze. It is alleged that the President, Leonid Kuchma, was involved in his disappearance, and Gongadze's headless corpse was found late last year.

Mr Kuchma has denied the allegations, and has remained in office, despite months of protests organised by the Ukrainian opposition.

But this latest case will turn the heat up on the Ukrainian president once again.

A regular criticism of Ukraine in the post-Soviet era has been that it has not had a free press.

And such a catalogue of unpunished attacks against journalists will do nothing to persuade observers that the authorities are sufficiently concerned to take the matter seriously.