A prominent journalist from Belarus was killed in a auto bombing in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev this morning, prompting shock and condemnation across the former Soviet Union and beyond.
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Renowned journalist Pavel Sheremet who was killed in a vehicle bomb explosion on Wednesday will be buried on July 23 in Minsk, his colleagues Svetlana Kalinkina said on Thursday.
Sheremet had irked officials in Belarus and Russian Federation before he moved to Ukraine, where he said there were fewer hurdles to independent reporting.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has begun to assist Ukrainian authorities with their investigation into the murder of famous journalist Pavel Sheremet. Her deputy, Alexander Fatsevych, said that investigators were now viewing surveillance camera footage and interviewing colleagues and witnesses to come to a better understanding of the situation, Ukrainska Pravda reported. Sheremet was a renowned Kremlin and Lukasheno critic and awarded the International Press Freedom Award (1999) and the OSCE Prize for Journalism and Democracy (2002).
He had earlier received worldwide recognition for his fierce stance against Belarussian strongman President Alexander Lukashenko and had worked as a journalist in Russian Federation for state-owned TV channels. Outpourings of grief came Wednesday morning from politicians and journalists in all three countries.
“Why do they kill journalists in Ukraine?”.
“This morning’s gruesome incident reminds us all that the safety situation for journalists in Ukraine must be addressed effectively and timely”, Mijatović said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered the law enforcement authorities to immediately investigate the crime.
“The last time we met was at the funeral of Boris Nemtsov, and of course I couldn’t have known that a similar thing would happen to Pavel”, Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the Belarussian opposition party United Civil Party, told Reuters.
In 2004 Sheremet suffered a severe beating in Belarus.
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He was jailed in 1997 for reporting on political oppression in Belarus and President Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (who is still in power after more than 20 years). Georgiy Gongadze, the other co-founder of Ukrayinska Pravda who was critical of former Ukraine president Leonid Kuchma, was found beheaded outside Kiev in 2000.
