A recent report by the United Nations has offered some damning allegations against both Ukrainian authorities and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, saying while fighting has declined, human rights abuses continue to run rampant.
Kidnappings, arbitrary detentions and torture
are still occurring with alarming frequency – on both sides, according to the
report.
Several such cases were recorded from August
to mid-November of 2015, long after a newly reached cease-fire saw fighting
greatly decline from Sept. 1. The allegations were detailed in a report
compiled by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
and released on Dec. 10.
On the Ukrainian side, the victims were
allegedly “people suspected of
trespassing against territorial integrity or terrorism or believed to be
supporters” of the Kremlin-backed separations, according to the report,
which identified the Security Service of Ukraine and other Ukrainian law
enforcement bodies as culprits.
“Elements of
the Security Service of Ukraine appear to enjoy a high degree of impunity, with
rare investigations into allegations involving them,” the report said. “Without
this, impunity will remain widespread. The independence of the judiciary in the
face of such cases is often challenged by pressures and threats of political
activists who consider those indicted as patriots.”
Olena
Hitlyanska, spokesperson for the SBU, did not respond to requests for comment
on the allegations.
The UN also
expressed great concern about the practice of keeping detainees at unofficial
detention centers, where ill-treatment and torture are more likely and which
international monitors cannot access. This practice has not been decreasing
despite the waning hostilities in the east, the report said.
But
Russian-backed separatists were found to be guilty of the same offenses, and
their targets include not only pro-Ukrainians and Ukrainian soldiers but also
fellow separatist fighters.
In one such
case, a separatist fighter in the Vostok Battalion was “disappeared” after
witnessing fellow fighters execute three Ukrainian soldiers in early 2015, the
report said.
Another
separatist fighter went missing only for his mother to be informed, months
later, that he’d been detained by the self-proclaimed general prosecutor’s
office on suspicion of carrying out kidnappings and forced disappearances
himself. His own disappearance was included in the charges against him.
Perhaps most
alarming, due to restrictions on media in the occupied territories, many
heinous crimes are simply not being reported to the rest of the world.
“To ensure their safety, journalists working
in the areas controlled by armed groups reportedly have increasingly resorted
to self-censorship,” the report said.
Foreign journalists, the main source of
information on what is happening in the occupied territories for much of the
international community, have been mostly driven out.
Things took a turn for the worse in the summer
of 2015 after a “special analytical department” was set up at the separatist-controlled
press center. The department is responsible for monitoring all the work of
foreign journalists working on the territory. As a result, many journalists
have been denied accreditation and ordered to leave, on the grounds that they
are “propagandists.”
