Dmitry Chobit

The court’s decision against Chobit is backed up by state law, which forbids invasions of the citizen’s private sphere. According to the law in question, Chobit had no right to spread confidential information about Medvedchuk without obtaining his agreement.

Similar parallels exist with the legal statute in many other democratic countries. However, in Ukraine any legal norm can be stretched to the point of absurdity. For example, millions of citizens know that in 1973 the commander of the Komsomol operative group, no less than Viktor Medvedchuk himself, together with the son of a teacher at the Kiev higher school of Militia attacked a juvenile, Andrei Krichak, breaking ribs and beating his head. All know that Medvedchuk was convicted for this. However, after two months inside, he walked free after militia chiefs had been petitioned.

In 1979 Medvedchuk acting in his capacity as a lawyer against the dissident and poet Vasil Stus declared to the court, “Stus has committed a crime and deserves to be punished”. The poet was indeed punished: he was sentenced to the maximum prison term allowed, perishing in a labour camp for political detainees. In addition, it was an open secret to all that Medvedchuk’s father served during the Nazi occupation in the “Arbeitsamt” (Employment Office): an organisation involved in procuring young Ukrainians for slave labour in the Third Reich. All this information was obtained by Chobit from archives. But it would seem that the author has misunderstood the concept of freedom of speech.

The author of Narcissus has received moral support from the opposition press, with even the Kommunist newspaper reporting on it. However, human rights activists have not broken their silence on the matter, considering the spreading of information about a person’s private affairs not to merit public comment. However, beating a minor or persecuting a dissident can hardly be deemed to belong exclusively to an individual’s private sphere. Nor was the collaboration with the Nazis entirely unknown. The Pechersky regional court did not regard the head of the presidential administration as a public figure. These facts however will hardly remain hidden by using legal red tape.

In the 1990’s I wrote in the Moscow newspaper Express Chronicle that a native of Kharkov, Andrei Suhorukov, was not a part of the human rights movement yet had become the chairman of the Ukrainian association of the International Society for Human Rights. At that time one of the leading human rights activists warned me that Suhorukov could institute legal proceedings against me as I had openly said that Suhorukov was loyal to the Soviet regime and had become a legal expert with a “doubtful prot?g?”. In spite of the authenticity of the information, the Ukrainian legal code protects the official from the spreading of “unhelpful” information against him. If one takes into account that the majority of current human rights activists are “Sovietised” people it becomes clear why the legal proceedings against Dmitri Chobit excite so little comment.

Article 32 of the Ukrainian Constitution forbids the invasion of an individual’s private sphere. However the criteria defining these limits need to reflect circumstances, historical events, and social change. Otherwise the courts will end up forbidding the analysis of biographies about state leaders, deputies and party leaders.

The Militia have since seized the 20,000 print run of Narcissus. Unknown people set alight Chobit’s garage and the premises of the book’s publisher. However, the author does not despair: he is busy writing a new book, titled “Medvedchuk’s offshore business”. In the words of the author, the head of an organisation called Antimafia, Anatoli Yermak, who died in a car crash, passed on many facts concerning Medvedchuk’s financial machinations in the business sphere and in the creation of illegal offshore trusts and concerns. Chobit hopes that this time the courts will not apply the law of confidentiality, as the constitution allows the publication of any data which might relate to the financial security of the country.