As an investigative reporter and the lead narrator of The Killing of a Journalist on the 2018 brutal murder of her colleague Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in Slovakia, every pixel in the film would have by now been hardwired into Pavla Holcová’s memories. Yet the Czech journalist sat with her head slightly tilted to the left gazing intently at the screen as the 100-minute film had its India premiere at the EMS Hall in Kochi, Kerala, on the morning of Sunday, March 26.
Packed with CCTV footage, archived pressers, police testimonies, interviews, and incriminating details from several terabytes of a data dump that was leaked to the journalists investigating the double murder, the film – directed by Matt Sarnecki – unravels the anatomy of a ‘captured state’. Incisive and emotionally charged, the film is an exposé on a democracy that had rotted from the inside, controlled by a nexus of oligarchs and people on their payroll: politicians, high-ranking police officers, and judges. In doing so, it also holds a mirror to countries like India, which has witnessed the murder of journalists like Gauri Lankesh.
Ján, who was involved in a high-profile investigation, was killed along with his fiancée at their home in Velká Mača, a village in southwest Slovakia, in February 2018. He was shot in the chest at close range as he opened the door. Martina was found lying in a pool of blood in a room inside, a gunshot to her head. An open laptop at the scene of the crime showed she had been looking at pictures of wedding gowns. The couple had plans to get married in the months to come, the film, which premiered in 2022, tells us.
Investigating the conspiracy behind the crime was personal for Pavla and fellow journalists as Ján had been working on the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) with Pavla. Ján and Pavla were also colleagues at the news portal Aktuality.sk. Ján was already in the crosshairs of Slovakian oligarch Marián Kočner for reporting extensively on his suspicious financial transactions and fraud.
“It was the most difficult thing I have done in my life. It was not nice, you know. We have been going through files, the crime scene, we saw the blood, the reports by the police… we needed to understand and also reflect on the assassination. We thought they [those responsible] would be free even after the assassination. We wanted to send out a message that even if you kill a journalist you can’t kill the story,” Pavla said in an interaction after the screening in Kochi. Everyone felt responsible for not doing enough to protect Ján, she added.
The killings unleashed a wave of public protests in Slovakia, earlier seen only during the fall of the Communist regime. Kočner was soon arrested in a case related to financial fraud but was not charged for the murder. As public anger grew leading to massive demonstrations, Prime Minister Robert Fico and Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák resigned. It took two months for the police chief Tibor Gašpar to resign. The suspected assassins were arrested many months later and Kočner was charged with murder based on their statements.
A major breakthrough came after Pavla received a cryptic message from an anonymous number on her phone two years after the murder. “Please be available,” it said. Elections were due, and the source, who was worried over the fate of the investigation, dumped 70 terabytes of data on Kočner from his two iPhones and laptops. Pavla and colleagues set up a room with no daylight or Wi-Fi connection, which they nicknamed Kočner’s Library, to decode the information, which helped them unearth his links to the judiciary and the police. Even though the evidence was incriminating, a criminal court of justice pronounced Kočner not guilty.
The final trial in the case has not ended and Pavla is worried about the outcome. Elections are scheduled for the end of September this year in Slovakia, and the party that was ruling when the killings took place is widely expected to return to power. “Then we would be back to square one and need to start again,” she said.
A day before the documentary was screened at Kochi, Pavla was presented the Media Person of The Year award instituted by the Kerala Media Academy, an autonomous body under the Kerala government, for her contributions to journalism.