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By Inessa Kim, TOL correspondent in Poland
Transitions On Line, Prague, Czech Republic
Thursday, 17 April 2003
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WARSAW, Poland--Covering death and violence is the stock-in-trade of war
journalists. Everyone who knew Reuters Warsaw-based war correspondent and TV
cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, realized that stints in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo,
Macedonia, the Middle East, and Afghanistan must have been full of ghastly
sights and personal danger.
But when death came to Taras Protsyuk in Baghdad on 9 April, the shock was
huge for all who knew him, including myself. His character seemed unscarred
by the violence. He did not like to talk about war or his job on the front
lines. He did not give his fellow journalists to understand that he might be
better and more professional than them. He did not seek to impress as a
tough man or a real war correspondent. Instead, Taras was always ready to
help. Everyone could count on him.
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Taras Protsyuk
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Taras, your tragic death affected all of us, his friends from Warsaw Reuters
office wrote in his obituary. We remember you as an admirable, always
smiling, humble and lovely man. From the joy that flowed from your eyes
nobody could have guessed what dramatic situations you witnessed. We still
cannot believe it.
The shock, though, was also because he died in what should have been one of
the safest places in Baghdad, the Hotel Palestine, where most foreign
journalists were being housed. For some reason, a U.S. tank commander
decided that Taras room should be shelled. He died along with a Spanish
cameraman, Jose Couso, from the Spanish television channel Telecinco. Three
other Reuters staff members were wounded.
By the time he was killed, Taras was one of our most experienced TV
journalists, said Reuters editor in chief Geert Linnebank. He stood out as
an extremely professional reporter on the most bloody conflicts of the last
decade, Linnebank said.
The road to Baghdad was a long one, 10 years in the making and very
literally a world away from Taras first interest, outer space. Born in 1968
in Ivano-Frankovsk in western Ukraine, his dream of flying in space took him
to the aviation engineering department of the Military Academy in Leningrad.
But the last year of his studies--1990-91--was also the last year of the
Soviet Union. Space exploration plans fell to earth, and Taras dropped his
studies and picked up a camera.
School did, though, leave Taras fluent in Arabic, making him an even more
obvious choice for stints in some of the worlds worst war zones.
Taras, who became a correspondent for Reuters in 1993, moved his base, and
his wife and son, from Kiev to Warsaw in 1999. He kept in constant contact
with his Ukrainian friends, however, and he was well remembered in Ukraine.
Hundreds attended his funeral on 13 April, and the Ukrainian parliament in
Kiev observed a minute of silence in his memory.
Taras became fluent in Polish, and was supposed to gain Polish citizenship
soon. He worked with Reuters, contributed to the Polish TV stations TVN and
TVN24, and found many friends in Poland. Cezary Sokolowski, an AP
photoreporter, told the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita that everybody loved
Taras.
Brave but never reckless, Taras seemed always ready to capture the moment.
In 1997 there was a flood disaster in Poland, Sokolowski recalled. I was
going to Wroclaw and in front of me there was a car with a pontoon on the
roof. Who was it? Taras.
When war loomed in Iraq, Taras knew he would be going. According to a
colleague, even at the New Year's Eve party he was constantly checking his
mobile phone to check whether he had been called to leave for Baghdad
immediately.
Was this eagerness, anxiety, or just professionalism? Anna Brzezinska, chief
photo editor of the newspaper Rzeczpospolita, recalls that Taras, always
joyful and smiling, had been unusually serious before leaving for Iraq. My
husband and I both had the same impression, she said. He was different, as
if it was not him.
Eventually, in February, Taras and a group of 18 Reuters journalists set off
for Iraq. According to Reuters, Taras wanted at all costs to show to the
world how years of sanctions and then the war had affected the lives of
Iraqs people.
Another Polish war journalist, Wojciech Jagielski, wrote in Gazeta Wyborcza
that though both he and Taras lived in Warsaw, they met more often in
Tbilisi, Grozny, or Kabul. This time he remained in Warsaw, while Taras went
out on the beat. I encouraged him to write down his thoughts in breaks
between shootings and dictate them to me as notes from Baghdad for Gazeta
[Wyborcza] , he recalled. He said that he didn't have time, that he was
working at night filming air raids and sleeping during the day.
He was not asleep, though, when he was hit by the tank shell. He was filming
from the balcony of the Hotel Palestine. War is cruel, as Taras knew better
than most.
Transitions Online, Prague, Czech Republic, April 17, 2003
http://www.tol.cz/look/TOLnew/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIss
ue=45&NrSection=17&NrArticle=9324
For personal and academic use only
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