Slovakian Premier’s Resignation Over Journalist’s Killing Not Enough for Protesters
image © Tomáš Benedikovič 2018 https://dennikn.sk/
The murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak, who was looking into fraud tied to the government and organized crime led Prime Minister Robert Fico to step down but tens of thousands protesters in the streets of the capital Bratislava want the entire coalition dissolved.
Kuciak, 27, and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, were found dead in his apartment in western Slovakia on Feb. 26 with bullet wounds to the chest and head, the International Press Institute said.
At the time, he was wrapping up a report on tax evasion and fraud among Slovak businesses, including people connected to the country’s governing party, Smer, which reports said led right up to Fico’s office.
The killings rattled European Union officials after journalists, reporters group and Transparency International condemned the murders and fears were raised about the safety of journalists in the EU, especially in the wake of the murder of Maltese anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed by a powerful car bomb Oct. 16, 2017, for which three people were charged.
The killings in Slovakia have triggered a political crisis and the biggest anti-government protests since the 1989 Velvet Revolution that toppled the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
Kuciak was reporting on alleged Italian mafia ties to Fico associates and corruption scandals linked to Fico’s leftist Smer Social Democracy party.
Protest organizer Karolina Farska said the coalition government’s efforts “to stay in power at any cost clearly proves that they want to sweep all the corruption cases under the rug — the cases that the slain Jan Kuciak was writing about,” CNN reported.
Journalist Peter Nagy, who helped coordinate the protests, told the news agency that said Fico’s resignation was not the answer. “Fico’s resignation is just a change of figures – Fico was very clear that he is not going anywhere and that we will continue to see him as an active political figure within the government.
“Fico’s resignation … does not bring change, but further undermines the trust of the people in the state,” Nagy said. “The new government will still have the same people within it, and many of these people have connections to corruption and organized crime.
“We believe that the only way for the public to regain trust in the state is to have new elections — people really feel that something needs to be changed.”
The Index on Censorship called for an independent investigation and said the killings raised “troubling questions about the safety of media professionals in the European Union.”
On March 1, Slovak police said they had detained seven people in connection with the killings of Kuciak and Kušnírová. The people detained, who are between 26 and 62 years old, are believed to have ties to Italian organized crime, Police Corps President Tibor Gaspar said at a news conference that day, according to TASR.
On Feb. 28, Aktuality.sk published the last unfinished report Kuciak was working on before he was killed. The government offered a reward of €1 million ($1.2 million US) for information about the killing.
“Ján was one of the most talented young journalists in our country,” said Gabriel Sipos, Director of Transparency International Slovakia. “The ability to uncover the background of corruption and fraud is rare in Slovakia, but he had the courage and drive to do it, and he did it well.”
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