Tag Archives: arbitrariness
| Andrei Sokolov: ‘They hid me from OSCE commission in a private apartment’
Andrei Sokolov, kidnapped six months ago while leaving a Ukrainian court, has returned to Russia
By Julia Polukhina, Novaya Gazeta
October 15: Russian citizen Andrei Sokolov came to the Dontesk People’s Republic (DPR) on December 4, 2014, where, in his own words, he had planned to engage in humanitarian aid. But on December 16, 2014, he mistakenly drove his car into a Ukrainian roadblock near Gorlovka, was formally arrested on December 29, and ended up in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) office in Mariupol. Sokolov was charged under Part. 1, Art. 258-3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (assistance to a terrorist organization). Solokov’s lawyer, Valery Avzhenko, argued that there was insufficient evidence to convict Sokolov, and the evidence that existed had been obtained in violation of the rules and requirements of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
| Miroslava Berdnik Case: SBU’s Devious Methods to Silence the Truth in Ukraine
Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard
Where does the taxpayers’ money go or how I became involved in another criminal case
You just will not be surprised, but I became involved in another criminal case!
However, the case that was opened by the SBU, but the Prosecutor General’s office.
The case of the pogrom during the exhibition “Volyn massacre” in the Ukrainian House, which took place more than 6 years ago on April 8th, 2010!
Do you remember the night’s crumpled message on paper that was transferred via the neighbour from the Colonel of Police? So, it turns out that the Colonel was real. It seems that the Prosecutor General’s office, which allegedly was informed by unknown witnesses said that I was a participant of the event, requested this Colonel to interrogate me as a participant. For now, at least as a witness.
And despite the fact that I immediately explained to him that I will answer his questions only in the presence of his lawyer, especially because I am the same witness the 40 million Ukrainians who witnessed this pogrom during the exhibition “Volyn massacre” on TV, he tried to ask a few questions.
It’s as a matter of fact that I have already answered during a pretrial investigation the investigator for particularly important cases of the Main Investigation Department of the GPU on the question of whether I’m participant of this exhibition (it is the case according to which the ex-Deputy Vadim Kolesnichenko declared as wanted). As proof of my innocence as a non-participant and non-witness, I referred to my material in the blog “Varjag-2007” from April 8th 2010 the “Volyn massacre” photo exhibition, in which it was particularly indicated that “I came after the moment nationalists, who attempted to disrupt an exhibition, were dragged out of the hall by their legs, so the rumours about the disruption of the exhibition are greatly exaggerated, the organizers of the exhibition told me that only a few books were torn.”
Despite my refusal to answer his questions without a lawyer, the Colonel over the phone asked me a question – if I was the author of such a post, to which I replied that it violates my rights to continue after my request to ask questions only in the presence of a lawyer.
My lawyer Elena Lukash called him and clarified all the relevant issues. But…
Now I tried to find in the archive of my blog “Varyag-2007” material that justifies me as a non-party and a non-witness to the pogrom of the exhibition “Volyn massacre”… and I didn’t find it! Only SBU officers could have removed it, who continue to monitor my accounts, despite my complaint to the Chairman of the SBU that the SBU illegally without a court order withdrew all my passwords, logins, and emails and obtained control over all my accounts, and continue to control it. It is in this way that taxpayers’ money is now used.
But initiators made one mistake: it is VERY difficult to destroy material on the Internet. Here is a repost of my destroyed material, the photo report of the “Volyn Massacre” exhibition, proving that I am neither a participant nor a witness.
I visited the exhibition “Volyn massacre: Polish and Jewish victims of OUN-UPA” (the name is not misleading – in the catalogue of the documental photo exhibition it says of the Ukrainian, Russian, and Czechoslovak victims of the UPA).
I came after the moment nationalists, who attempted to disrupt an exhibition, were dragged out of the hall by their legs, so the rumours about the disruption of the exhibition are greatly exaggerated, the organizers of the exhibition told me that only a few books were torn
However, this advertising Billboard dedicated to the exhibition no longer exists:
Passage à tabac, froid glacial: la vie dans les prisons secrètes de l’est de l’Ukraine
Des coups à répétition, un froid glacial, l’ablation d’un rein..: détenu secrètement pendant près de 600 jours par les forces ukrainiennes, Mykola Vakarouk a vécu un enfer, qu’il raconte dans un entretien à l’AFP.
Le jeune homme, qui porte les cicatrices de son ablation du rein, a été libéré fin juillet, à la suite de pressions exercées par les ONG Amnesty International et Human Rights Watch (HRW), qui ont révélé dans un rapport l’existence de prisons secrètes tenues par les services de sécurité ukrainiens (SBU) dans l’est du pays.
Dans ce rapport publié en juillet, les deux ONG affirmaient également qu’aussi bien les forces ukrainiennes que les séparatistes prorusses se livraient à la torture et n’hésitaient pas à faire disparaître des civils dans l’Est.
La longue détention de Mykola Vakarouk a débuté le 9 décembre 2014. Le jeune homme de 34 ans affirme n’avoir jamais su pourquoi les forces de Kiev l’avaient arrêté dans sa ville d’Oukraïnsk, sous contrôle de l’armée ukrainienne, dans la région de Donetsk.
Assis sur une chaise, la main menottée à un radiateur, “l’interrogatoire a commencé. (…) Deux hommes en civil sont entrés lui et ont dit +Maintenant à chaque mauvaise réponse, tu recevras un coup dans la poitrine+”, raconte-t-il.
– ‘Prêt à être fusillé’ –
“J’étais prêt à être fusillé. On m’a tellement battu. Il n’y avait plus rien à battre”, dit-il.
Il explique qu’on l’a alors obligé à reconnaître qu’il “avait participé à des provocations contre les autorités ukrainiennes”. Pendant cinq jours, il a été détenu dans des conditions extrêmes.
“Je gelais dans une chambre qui faisait un mètre sur deux. (…) Même l’eau gelait là-bas”, décrit-il. “On ne me laissait pas aller aux toilettes. Les toilettes c’était une bouteille de 5 litres”, ajoute Mykola.
Il explique que son rein, qui avait reçu de graves coups, a terriblement souffert de ce froid. Lorsqu’on l’a transféré à Kharkiv, où se trouve, selon HRW et Amnesty, une prison secrète tenue par le SBU, il tenait “à peine sur (ses) jambes”.
Peu après, en mars 2015, il a dû être hospitalisé dans cette grande ville industrielle proche de l’Est séparatiste prorusse. On l’a alors obligé à se présenter sous une fausse identité, celle d’un habitant de Kharkiv, raconte-t-il.
Son pronostic vital étant engagé, c’est là qu’il a dû subir une ablation du rein.
Il est ensuite resté des mois en détention avant d’être libéré, contre toute attente, le 25 juillet 2016: “On nous a rendu nos papiers et 100 hryvnias (3,5 euros, ndlr)”, dit-il.
Le 25 juillet et le 2 août, 13 prisonniers détenus secrètement à Kharkiv par les forces ukrainiennes ont été libérés, affirment Amnesty et HRW, dans un rapport publié fin août.
– Cinq personnes encore détenues –
Ces libérations interviennent à la suite de la publication de leur précédent rapport dénonçant l’existence de ces prisons secrètes à Kharkiv, Kramatorsk, Izioum et Marioupol, dans l’est de l’Ukraine. Les ONG avaient alors appelé les pays occidentaux soutenant Kiev à faire pression pour mettre fin à ces pratiques.
Les ONG s?inquiétaient aussi du fait que les civils détenus avaient souvent été présentés comme des combattants afin d’être utilisés lors d’échanges de prisonniers de guerre entre les deux camps, ce qui “peut être assimilé à une prise d’otage et donc à un crime de guerre”, selon le rapport.
L’ONU avait déjà dénoncé en juillet de possibles “crimes de guerres” commis par les deux camps dans l’est de l’Ukraine, s’inquiétant notamment d’exécutions sommaires de civils.
Selon Amnesty et HRW, au moins cinq personnes restent secrètement détenues dans les prisons ukrainiennes.
“Nous appelons Kiev à prendre des mesures pour assurer (leur) libération” et “pour rendre justice et protéger” ceux qui en désormais besoin, a indiqué John Dalhuisen, directeur d’Amnesty International pour l’Europe et l’Asie centrale.
Selon les deux ONG, avant de libérer les prisonniers, les gardes ukrainiens les ont en effet “menacés de sévères représailles s’ils venaient à parler publiquement” de leur détention secrète.
Malgré ces menaces, Mykola Vakarouk ne veut pas rester dans l’ombre. Il a engagé un avocat et est rentré chez lui, à Oukraïnsk.
“Pourquoi je partirais d’ici?”, lance-il. “Mes parents sont enterrés ici, mes enfants sont nés ici”.
| Witch-hunt in Ukrainian schools
A new school year begins in Ukraine at September 1, that is why this day is considered Knowledge day. Ukrainian nationalists have decided to prepare for that date on their own, and have organized a witch-hunt among teachers and university professors. They are specifically browsing the pages of teachers in social networks to identify signs of sympathy for the Soviet Union or Russia, as well as opposition to the Kiev regime’s interpretation of Ukrainian crisis in 2014-2016 years. If they find something like this, they begin a public persecution of the victim.
In recent weeks, there were already several such cases in Ukraine. Witch-hunt campaign was launched in Mariupol. There Ukrainian nationalists found 8 teachers whose views they consider “anti-Ukrainian” and demanded their dismiss. Nationalists in Kharkov took similar searches. They found 3 teachers. http://kharkovchane.ru/2016/08/16/v-gorodax-ukraina-trebuyut-uvolit-uchitelej-za-lajki-v-socsetyax/
See more details http://rusvesna.su/recent_opinions/1471475040
Nationalists in Odessa conducted similar searches too. Nationalist site «048.ua» told about the features of this technology. The monitoring object was the social network “Odnoklassniki”: “About a week we examined what our teachers write and where put the “like” in the social networks. How do we do it? – We went to the site of each school, found the name and photo of the teacher, and picked through the search human we needed”. According to them almost every school in Odessa has a teacher hostile to Ukrainian nationalism. In their article nationalists indicated information about the seven teachers. http://www.048.ua/news/1336557
In Kharkov, Odessa and Mariupol they hurried to write denunciations to the state security. How did that affect the fate of teachers, we do not know.
The campaign also spread to the universities. Journalist Sergei Ivanov shows particular activity in public denunciations on the university professors. He works on the TV channel “1 + 1”, the owner of the channel is one of the largest Ukrainian billionaires Kolomoisky. Ivanov began his inquisitorial activity in the Zaporozhye region, and recently switched to Kiev. In the Kiev Pedagogical University, he found the two sisters Inna and Irina Kovalchuk. One taught English and other trained in postgraduate school. He had caught both sympathetic to Russia. The sisters visited Moscow this summer and photographed on a background of the Kremlin and the Russian flag. As soon as the TV channel “1 + 1” told about the case, Kovalchuk sisters had been dismissed from the university. A warrant for the dismissal the university rector’s office has received personally from the Minister of Education of Ukraine Liliya Grinevich. Mrs. Grinevich said in an interview with TV channel “1 + 1”, it is necessary to dismiss such teachers on charges of committing an immoral act. ?list=PL1neMztLSbMMZ2OSs1hl7BKBb3UcA_wD1
In Ukraine there are no laws that would prohibit teachers to express their views on the Internet. However, this ban is now set in the order of case law.
| Local council deputy from Ukraine spent 15 months in secret jail
People often disappear in Ukraine. Some of them were kidnapped by security services and accused of separatism. Kidnapped people are contained in special secret prisons. UN in the spring of 2016 condemned this practice, but Ukrainian security services have denied the existence of secret prisons. Meanwhile, one of the victims that have passed through this prison, recently gave an interview.
At the time of the kidnapping Konstantin Beskorovainy was a deputy city council in Konstantinovka, Donbas region. He was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine. On 27 November he was kidnapped by unknowns. A few days later Beskorovainy found himself in a jail of SBU in Kharkov. In a cell measuring approximately 30 square meters there were 13 people. Employees of Ukrainian security services beat him and other prisoners. All the time, while Beskorovainy was in prison, the SBU denied the fact of his detention and his wife’s requests responded that it had no information of his imprisonment.
Officially deputy was suspected of intending to poison city ponds with cyanide. However, the trial has never begun. February 26, 2016 Beskorovainy was released with the condition not to tell anyone about the holding by the SBU. After the liberation the deputy was four months treated by doctors. And he will have even surgery in the future.
According Beskorovainy at the time of its release in the SBU Kharkov were at least more than 16 people detained.
