November 28, 2004

To: CNN Television News

URGENT RE: REPORTING ON UKRAINE SITUATION

I am sure that I speak for the members of our organization in commending Jill Dogherty for a generally excellent job of reporting from Ukraine. However, this morning she began her report by saying that the news out of Ukraine was "not good" and referred to the fact that the Viktor Yuschenko's democratic supporters are continuing to block government buildings.

The courageous supporters of Yuschenko are to be lauded for their fortitude and restraint but they have had enough of corruption; they have the right to refuse to become a vassal state in a reconstituted USSR. Unknowledgeable American viewers might get the impression that the supporters of the Yuschenko side are perhaps the "bad guys," when in reality the current administration in Ukraine is a criminal regime.

These BACKGROUND facts are not getting through or are not getting through enough to your listeners:

• In addition to the torture and beheading of Georgi Gongadze, 20 other journalists and human rights advocates have been murdered, have died under very suspicious circumstances, or have disappeared and never been heard from again so far during Kuchma's tenure. (We can supply you with a list of those names, if you would like).
• Yanukovich, as you have reported once or twice, has a criminal record.
• Yuschenko's terrible facial disfigurement was caused by intentional poisoning-a chemical analysis of his medical situation is being undertaken in the US by lab experts in chemical and biological weaponry because the Austrian doctors who twice treated Yuschenko in Vienna reported whatever caused this damage to his system was nothing consistent with civilian medicine. One person in Vienna described what was used against Yuschenko as a "multi-metallic" substance. One of the doctors had his life threatened-a classic, outrageous and brutish signature of the Kuchma/Yanukovich forces.
• It would be of interest in this crisis for you to publish side-by-side pictures of what happened to Yuschenko in the space of one month, this past September. Please see attached.

This is no ordinary election dispute. Yuschenko is trying to effect a peaceful transfer of power to begin a legitimate government, and this movement should not be cast in any other light.

Respectfully,
Ihor Gawdiak
President, UACC