GLASNOST DEFENSE FOUNDATION'S DIGEST No. 170 (February 16, 2004)

Ukraine. Tax collectors to divide media outlets into "friendly" and "hostile".

By Mark Agatov ,
GDF staff correspondent in Ukraine

The editors and publishers of more than a hundred Russian-language periodicals in Ukraine have sent Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma, Prime Minister V. F. Yanukovich and Supreme Rada (Parliament) Chairman V. M. Litvin an open letter of protest against the new republican law "On the 2004 State Budget of Ukraine" which is deemed to put the Ukrainian-language print media in a privileged position.

The letter says, in part: "On February 5, 2004, as the Supreme Rada was passing a series of amendments to a number of tax laws in connection with the enactment of the 2004 Budget Law (draft No. 4000-1), the parliamentarians made a fatal mistake by voting for the preservation of VAT benefits only for the periodicals issued in the national language. The voting was hasty; it had not been preceded by any meaningful discussion of the likely effects of that decision".

The open letter's authors maintain that "establishing VAT benefits for the newspapers and magazines issued in Ukrainian is a move subjecting the media issued in other languages to discriminatory treatment, which is a clear violation of the Ukrainian Constitution, restriction of civil rights and freedoms, and encroachment on the rights of ethnic minorities".

"For the first time in the history of independent Ukraine, periodicals have been divided into those 'deserving' and 'not deserving' benefits, depending on their language," the document says. "For the first time ever, parliamentarians dared to treat two-thirds of the periodical publications in Ukraine's press market in an openly discriminatory manner. All the editors in Ukraine, whatever the language of their publications, make up the group of domestic producers entitled to be treated equitably and have equal rights as taxpayers. A situation with some periodicals beginning to finance the rest of the press from the funds they pay in taxes, only because of language differences between them, is inadmissible".

In the view of the letter's authors, "with presidential elections in the offing, prerequisites have thus been created for law violations, corrupt practices and pressure on the media".

The Russian-language press represented by the editors-in-chief and publishers of 146 periodicals is calling on the legislative and executive branches to reconsider the latest decision on VAT benefits for the Ukrainian-language print media and to urgently decide how much the republic's newspapers and magazines will have to pay in taxes.