FOTP 2013 Full Report

sentence that was imposed in 2011 for her alleged mishandling of natural gas negotiations withRussia in 2009. Journalists endured an escalation in attacks in the months ahead of theparliamentary elections, while Yanukovych’s relatives and allies continued to use their positionsto dramatically increase their personal wealth.The constitution and legal framework generally provide for media freedom and areamong the most progressive in Eastern Europe. Libel was decriminalized in 2001, and inFebruary 2009 the Supreme Court instructed judges to follow the civil libel standards of theStrasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, which granted lower levels of protection topublic officials and clearly distinguished between value judgments and factual information.Nonetheless, officials continue to use libel lawsuits filed in the country’s politicized court systemto deter critical news reporting. Respect for other media-related laws has diminished in recentyears.The Party of Regions proposed various new laws and initiatives during 2012 in an effortto muzzle independent reporting on widespread corruption and nepotism among the ruling elite.In January, the party ousted media lawyer and lawmaker Andriy Shevchenko from his post ashead of the parliamentary committee on free speech and information. In July, the Party ofRegions proposed a bill that would recriminalize libel and insult, allowing up to five years’imprisonment for convicted offenders. The parliament initially passed the proposed law inSeptember, but withdrew it in October amid intense domestic and international criticism.Politicized courts, weakened by legal reforms introduced under Yanukovych, consistently ruledin favor of progovernment media owners and against outlets that criticized politicians and thegovernment during 2012. In August, for example, a Kyiv court found Hromadskyy ZakhystKyivshchyny reporter Andriy Kachor guilty of petty hooliganism and fined him 102 hryvnyas($13) for allegedly forcing his way into the office of a Party of Regions parliamentary candidate.Kachor had accused the candidate of misusing public funds in an interview on the independenttelevision station TVi.The National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council remains unreformed and hasapplied regulations in a secretive and highly partisan manner. The council used the transitionfrom analog to digital television broadcasting in 2011 to deny licenses to editorially independenttelevision stations such as TVi, TRC Chernomorskaya, and Rivne 1. Meanwhile, it awardeddigital licenses to progovernment stations or new outlets that were registered offshore tounknown owners. Other government officials, like tax inspectors, continued to enforceregulations in a selective and politicized manner in 2012. In July, tax police and prosecutorsraided the offices and froze the bank accounts of TVi—the last remaining national televisionstation that criticized the Yanukovych administration—while some 80 cable operators werereported to have dropped the channel. In September, a Kyiv court threatened the station withinsolvency by ordering it to pay 4 million hryvnyas ($500,000) in alleged back taxes. The timingof the financial pressure suggested that the authorities were attempting to control the mediaenvironment ahead of the October parliamentary elections.Government officials routinely took steps to limit journalists’ access to informationduring the year. In January, presidential security officers prevented journalists from filmingYanukovych’s entourage leaving his mansion in the northern Kyiv suburb of Mezhyhirya. InFebruary, Korrespondent reporter Iryna Solomko filed a lawsuit against the parliament after shewas denied information about civil servants working as assistants to lawmakers. A Kyiv courtruled against Solomko in March, despite a provision of the Law on Access to Information thatprohibits the withholding of such information about officials receiving state salaries. An389