DONETSK, Ukraine – After being seized more than a year ago, the building that formerly housed Ukraine’s SBU security service in Donetsk is now under heavy guard by gun-toting Russian-separatists.
Checkpoints prohibit the press from even approaching the building, which the pseudo-authorities in the occupied region have made the base of their own security service.
Despite being off limits, it’s an open secret in Donetsk that many prisoners are being held in its basement. There is a wide range of captives, from Ukrainian prisoners of war, to civilians accused of spying, to alleged criminals, city residents allege.
What the captives have in common, however, is that they were all detained without due process or proper legal oversight in a pervasive atmosphere of armed men arbitrarily applying rules.
A Russian-separatist fighter walking just outside the separatists’ security service building, who identifies himself only by his nom de guerre, “Cobra,” wouldn’t say what kind of prisoners were being held inside – only that they were being treated well. He is angered by further questions.
“Look, I can get you arrested as well if I want,” Cobra tells the Kyiv Post, ordering it away from the building.
Random arrests and the lack of the rule of law have become part of everyday life in Russian-held Donetsk, says Irina, a professor of economics who didn’t want her full name to be published because of the extremely precarious situation in the regional capital which had a pre-war population of 1 million.
“They will arrest anyone who they don’t like. Randomly. Without charge,” Irina told the Kyiv Post.
Irina claims to know some of the people who are responsible for the arrests of civilians, but she would name no names.
“When the uprising began last year just random people, who were just normal people back then, gained power within the self-proclaimed authorities,” Irina says.
“It was easy for them to point their fingers at other people and have them arrested for being pro-Ukrainian, or whatever. Not that they were, but just because of hate. I know one guy who had the husband of his ex-girlfriend arrested. Total madness.
“Donetsk has become the city of the mad, and it will never be as it once was,” Irina says, shaking her head and sighing deeply.
The same situation is evident all over the areas of Ukraine where Russian-backed separatists have seized control. Late at night on June 22, the Kyiv Post was detained by the Vostok Battalion and taken to a police station in the separatist-controlled town of Yasynuvata for a “document check.”
Inside the station an old woman, touching the hands of her arrested son, reaches between the steel bars of the holding cell.
“That’s a local thief,” says a female fighter, who identifies herself only by her first name, Veronika. “A local shop owner brought him here. He stole food,” she says briefly as she escorts the prisoner’s mother outside the police station.
The man starts crying as the old woman is led away, desperately trying to touch her hand again. Two male fighters grab him from behind and take him away. The armed men tell the Kyiv Post not to take photos or even write about what had been seen.
Veronika won’t say who the man is – she just repeats that he is a thief.
“The Bible says to not take something that’s not yours. We haven’t done anything wrong, but he has,” she responds.
When asked about the process for detaining and charging alleged criminals in the occupied areas, Yulia, a spokesperson for the so-called Defense Ministry of the pseudo-authorities who refuses to give her full name, becomes irritated as well.
“They’re imprisoned because they have violated our local laws,” she says. She would not comment on the legal basis for imprisoning the accused thief in Yasynuvata, or say if formal charges had been issued.
“We decide who violates our laws, not you,” she says, and then hangs up. She wouldn’t take further calls.
It’s impossible to establish how many people are currently imprisoned in the occupied areas. There are more than 250 captives held in the Donbas, according to President Petro Poroshenko told 1+1 television channel in an inteview on July 12.
“Unfortunately, we have not been confirmed the number which we seek,” he said.
Irina, the economics professor, summarizes the situation: “The authorities say (the government in) Kyiv is fascist, but I know that during the Second World War the fascists and Nazis randomly arrested people who they thought were against them. And look what’s happening in Donetsk. So who are the real fascists in this war?”
Kyiv Post staff writer Stefan Huijboom can be reached at [email protected]
