Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Ukraine.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in the
Ukraine. Some of these links may lead
to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even
false. No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to
verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Ukraine U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/ukraine/
[accessed 11 August
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT Abuse of detainees
by police remained a widespread problem. For example, on January 3, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group interviewed 30
prisoners from the Kharkiv Oblast’s Oleksyyivska correctional colony No. 25 after the group
received information regarding severe abuse of inmates, including torture and
rape. The group collected reports of rape, beatings, forced labor, and
extortion of money, and sent them to the State Bureau for Investigations to
open an investigation. The Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner on Human
Rights (Ombudsperson’s Office) visited the institution twice that month and
reported during its first visit instances of officers handcuffing 22 inmates
and beating them with rubber batons, which resulted in abrasions and
bruising. On January 11, the
Ombudsperson’s Office interviewed 12 inmates in the medical unit. The 12
individuals claimed that at around three or four in the morning, they were
handcuffed and dragged down the street in their underwear to the
institution’s headquarters, where they remained until around seven in the
evening. Inmates remained in handcuffs for almost 15 hours and did not
receive any food. Inmates also reported being dragged on the floor from the
first to second floor. Their bodies were reportedly covered in abrasions and
hematomas, particularly on their heads from the abuse they suffered. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Prison and
detention center conditions remained poor, did not meet international
standards, and at times posed a serious threat to the life and health of
prisoners. Physical abuse, lack of proper medical care and nutrition, poor
sanitation, and lack of adequate light were persistent problems. Physical
Conditions: Overcrowding remained a problem in some pretrial detention
facilities, although human rights organizations reported that overcrowding at
such centers decreased as a result of reforms in 2016 that eased detention
requirements for suspects. Monitors from the Office of the Parliamentary
Commissioner on Human Rights (Ombudsperson) reported that cells in one of the
Kharkiv detention facility’s buildings measured
less than 11 square feet, which allowed prisoners only enough room to stand.
According to monitors, even short-term detention there could be regarded as
mistreatment. Council of Europe
anti-torture Committee publishes report on Ukraine Executive Summary,
15 December 2020 [accessed 18
December 2020] The main objective
of the visit was to review the treatment of persons held in penitentiary institutions,
in particular at two correctional colonies in the Kharkiv
area, namely Colonies Nos. 25 and 100. In addition, the CPT’s delegation
visited, for the first time, Colony No. 77 in Berdyansk.
The visit to Colony No. 100 also provided an opportunity to review the
situation of prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment. Another objective of
the visit was to examine the action taken by the investigative authorities in
relation to complaints of ill-treatment of inmates by prison staff. At Colony No. 25,
the delegation received a number of credible allegations of physical
ill-treatment by prison officers in the course of 2019, consisting of
punches, kicks and blows with rubber truncheons, mainly in relation to
inmates who had refused to clean the premises (or accept other tasks imposed
by the administration) or following instances of disobedient behaviour. The alleged illtreatment
mainly took place in the offices of operational officers, occasionally with
the help of inmates (so-called “duty prisoners”) who had a designated role to
assist staff and were assigned supervisory tasks over other prisoners. In a
few cases, the alleged ill-treatment was of such severity that it could be
considered to amount to torture (e.g. extensive beating, infliction of burns
to the buttocks, asphyxiation using a plastic bag, etc.). In addition, the
delegation received allegations of threats of physical ill-treatment made by
staff (including threats of rape with a truncheon). Council of Europe
anti-torture Committee publishes report on Ukraine Executive Summary,
14 January 2020 [accessed 31 May
2020] Regarding means of
restraint, senior officials from the Ministry of Social Policy told the
delegation that they could only be legally resorted to in those of the
psycho-neurological “internats” which had a
Ministry of Health licence for the provision of
psychiatric care; in such cases, the rules applicable would be the same as
those applied in psychiatric hospitals. In practice, the delegation observed
that mechanical restraint was occasionally resorted to in Velykorybalske
and Baraboi, and seclusion was used in
the three “internats”, as
was chemical restraint,
irrespective of whether
the establishment concerned had
the relevant Ministry
of Health licence or
not. The CPT
recommended that the Ukrainian authorities
ensure that resort
to means of restraint
in all psycho-neurological “internats’
takes place in
accordance with the
law; this would require, as
a first step,
obtaining a Ministry
of Health licence for the provision of
psychiatric care. OHCHR
report: Hostages released from detention in Donbas subjected to torture Reuters, 19 March
2018 [accessed 25 March
2018] OHCHR documented 115
cases of credible allegations of unlawful or arbitrary detention, torture,
ill-treatment and/or sexual violence committed on both sides of the contact
line. All of those
interviewed described having been subjected to inhumane conditions of
detention, torture or ill treatment, sexual violence, threats of violence,
and/or violations of fair trial guarantees. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/ukraine/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 15 May
2020] F3. IS THERE
PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR
AND INSURGENCIES? Conditions in many
prisons are squalid and dangerous. Demonstrators
protest alleged torture of anti-graft bureau staff by prosecutors The Kyiv Post, 17
August 2016 www.kyivpost.com/photo/?id=421217 [accessed 17 August
2016] Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, said
on Aug. 15 that the prosecutors had illegally broken into a safehouse where bureau employees were based. The bureau staff were conducting surveillance of the prosecutors. As a result, they
had to call the anti-corruption bureau's special-force unit, which helped to
release the bureau employees. The bureau
employees said the prosecutors had hit them in the ribs, necks, jaws and
legs. The prosecutors also threatened to flay them and to cut out an eye with
a knife, the bureau employees claimed. Enforced
Disappearances, Torture Amnesty
International, 21 July 2016 www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/you-don-t-exist-arbitrary-detentions-enforced-disappearances-and-torture-in-eastern-ukraine [accessed 2 August
2016] [accessed 2 August
2016] The Ukrainian
authorities and pro-Kiev paramilitary groups have detained civilians
suspected of involvement with or supporting Russian-backed separatists, while
the separatist forces have detained civilians suspected of supporting or
spying for the Ukrainian government, Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch found. In one case,
“Vadim,” 39, was detained and tortured first by one side, then the other. In
April 2015, armed men seized him at a checkpoint manned by Ukrainian forces, pulled
a bag over his head, and questioned him about his alleged connections with
Russia-backed separatists. Vadim spent more than six weeks in captivity, most
of the time in a facility apparently run by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU)
personnel. His interrogators tortured him with electric shocks, burned him
with cigarettes, and beat him, demanding that he confess to working for
Russia-backed separatists. After they finally
released him, Vadim returned to Donetsk and was immediately detained by the
local de facto authorities, who suspected him of having been recruited by
Ukraine’s Security Service during his time in captivity. He spent more than
two months in incommunicado detention in an
unofficial prison in central Donetsk, where his captors also beat and
ill-treated him. A
Brutal Ordeal. A Monk Talks about his Torture Редакция портала
Православие.Ru,
20 April 2015 CAUTION - VIRUS
THREAT
>> www.pravoslavie.ru/english/78818.htm [accessed 10 May
2015] [accessed 20 January
2019] The torture chamber
had an opening in the ceiling for observation. He was now in it, with
handcuffs on his wrists and a bag on his head. The handcuffs were actually
more like stocks, which prevented any circular movement of the hands.
Whenever he gave an answer that the interrogators did not like, he was
beaten—first on the kidneys with a baton, and then on the arms, legs, and
liver. When this did not bring the desired result, his interrogators laid him
on the floor, the handcuffs cutting at his wrists, and water-boarded him,
“like in Guantanamo.” With a rag on his face, they poured water over his nose
and mouth from a bucket until he began to convulse. He thinks it lasted an
hour and a half, but he says that in that place, time is different. There
were no windows, and he did not even know whether it was day or night. It
could have been longer. When his convulsions began, they told him he would
“rest” until the morning, and then he would write his “testimony”. But apparently Fr. Theophan’s ordeal was nothing compared to what the
separatists were made to endure when taken captive. The other prisoners told
him that they had witnessed how these people were tortured. Their arms and
legs were slashed when they gave the “wrong” answers. At the Donetsk airport,
where the Ukrainian volunteer army interrogated prisoners, the separatists
were strung up by their hands, which were tied behind their backs. Whenever
they gave the wrong answer, the rope was pulled tighter. Fr. Theophan was also told how women were tortured in the
cell were he was held. “Metal cables attached to an
electrical device were clasped on their breasts and a strong charge was
administered until they were brought to a terrible state, and made to talk.” Human
Rights Watch World Report 2015 - Events of 2014 Human Rights Watch,
29 January 2015 www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/...
or
www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/wr2015_web.pdf [accessed 18 March
2015] UKRAINE MAIDAN VIOLENCE - On November 30
and December 1, 2013, riot police violently dispersed and severely beat
numerous peaceful demonstrators in Kiev protesting Yanukovich’s
rejection of a political and trade agreement with the European Union. Police
detained some of the protesters and beat them in custody. Abuse, torture
revealed at separatists' prison in Luhansk Nataliya Trach, Kyiv Post, 3
January 2015 www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/abuse-torture-revealed-at-self-proclaimed-luhansk-peoples-republic-illegal-prison-376631.html [accessed 5 January
2015] “If a prisoner
resisted he was beaten by a plastic pipe,” Aleksey Dakhnenko,
the deputy head of the illegal prison and member of the "Batman"
military unit, says in a video interview, posted on YouTube. The head of the
prison, known by the nickname 'Maniac', used a hammer to torture prisoners,
he adds. “Maniac was
well-known for his cruelty. As legend has it he had a surgery toolkit, the
set of field surgeon, which he always laid out in front of detainees to scare
them. In such a way he tried to extract testimony from prisoners,” Dakhnenko says: UN Committee
against Torture’s Concluding Observations on Sweden, Ukraine, Venezuela,
Australia, Burundi, USA, Croatia and Kazakhstan Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights OHCHR, Geneva, 24 November 2014 www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15336&LangID=E [accessed 7 December
2014] The UN Committee
against Torture will be holding a news conference to discuss the concluding observations
of its 53rd session ... Among the issues discussed during the session: UKRAINE: Slow
investigations, lack of accountability regarding excessive use of force by
police in connection with protests since November 2013; reports of torture,
ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, killings in areas under control of
armed groups, notably in Donetsk and Lugansk regions; high rate of mortality
among prisoners, mainly from tuberculosis; increase in the number of deaths
and suicides in custody; high rate of domestic violence. Ukraine's Ousted
President Viktor Yanukovych Faces ICC Trial Reuters, Kiev, 25
February 2014 [accessed 25 Feb
2014] Ukraine's
parliament voted on Tuesday to send fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych to
be tried by the International Criminal Court once he has been captured. In a resolution
which was overwhelmingly supported by the assembly, Yanukovych was linked to
police violence against protesters which had caused the deaths of more than
100 people and injured 2,000 Methods of torture used
by police against protesters included holding activists naked in temperatures
of 15 degrees below freezing, it alleged. Ukraine activist's
story fuels torture squad fears Maria Danilova, The
Associated Press AP, Kiev, 31 January 2014 bigstory.ap.org/article/missing-ukraine-activist-says-he-was-tortured [accessed 25 March
2014] www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-opposition-activist-dmytro-bulatov-says-kidnappers-crucified-him/ [accessed 31 August
2016] The bloody images
of Ukrainian opposition supporter Dmytro Bulatov, who says he was abducted and tortured for more
than a week, have fueled fears among anti-government activists that
extrajudicial squads are being deployed to intimidate the protest
movement. Bulatov,
who was in charge of a vocal protest group before he disappeared Jan. 22,
recounted a gruesome ordeal, saying his unidentified kidnappers beat him,
sliced off part of his ear and nailed him to a door during his time in
captivity. ‘‘There isn’t a spot on my
body that hasn’t been beaten. My face has been cut. They promised to poke my
eye out. They cut off my ear,’’ Bulatov, 35, said
Friday in a short video from his hospital ward. ‘‘They crucified me by
nailing me to a door with something and beat me strongly all the while.’’ Some opposition
leaders believe the government will do anything to save itself, including
sending brutal squads of torturers to quash the demonstrations. Prominent opposition figure Oleksandr Turchynov accused the government of being
behind the attacks on Bulatov and other activists. Amnesty
International urges Ukraine to end rampant police beatings, torture The Associated Press
AP, Kiev, 11 April 2013 [accessed 14 September
2014] Oleksandr Popov, an auto
mechanic from a Ukrainian provincial city, says police beat, choked and
shocked him with electricity for hours, trying to extract a confession out of
him. After they realized he was not the man they were looking for, they
simply released him, covered with bruises and barely able to stand. When
Popov complained, prosecutors refused to press charges. In a report
released Thursday, Amnesty International said Popov’s story is typical for
Ukraine, saying rampant beatings and torture at the hands of police go
unpunished Amnesty said that
out of some 115,000 complaints filed last year over police treatment, only
1,750 — about 1.5 percent — were investigated and only 320 criminal cases
were filed against about 440 police officers.. Conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/UKR/CO/5
(2007) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/ukraine2007.html [accessed 12 March
2013] Lack of effective
investigation into reports of torture and the role of the General
Prosecutor’s office 10. The Committee is
concerned by the failure to initiate and conduct prompt, impartial and
effective investigations into complaints of torture and ill-treatment, in
particular due to the problems posed by the dual nature and responsibilities
of the General Prosecutor’s office, (a) for prosecution and (b) for oversight
of the proper conduct of investigations.
The Committee notes the conflict of interest between these two
responsibilities, resulting in a lack of independent oversight of cases where
the General Prosecutor’s office fails to initiate an investigation. Furthermore, there is an absence of data on
the work of the General Prosecutor’s office, such as statistics on crime
investigations, prosecutions and convictions, and the apparent absence of a
mechanism for data collection. Evidence obtained
by coercion 11. The Committee
is concerned at the current investigation system in which confessions are
used as a principal form of evidence for prosecution, thus creating
conditions that may encourage the use of torture and ill-treatment of
suspects. The Committee regrets that the State party did not sufficiently
clarify the legal provisions ensuring that any statements which have been
made under torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, as
stipulated in the Convention. Law enforcement
personnel 13. The Committee
is concerned at allegations of acts in breach of the Convention committed by
law enforcement personnel, especially with regard to persons detained by the
militia and in pre-trial detention facilities (SIZO), and at the apparent
impunity of the perpetrators. The
Committee is also concerned at the reported use of masks by the
anti-terrorist unit inside prisons (e.g. in the Izyaslav
Correctional Colony, in January 2007), resulting in the intimidation and
ill-treatment of inmates. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT
- There were continuing reports of torture and other ill-treatment in police detention.
In a report on a visit to Ukraine in 2011, published in November, the Council
of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture stated that it had been
“inundated with allegations from detained persons” who had been subjected to
physical or psychological ill-treatment by police officers. Shevchenkivskiy police station in Kyiv was singled out as
being particularly “problematic”. On 18 September,
Parliament passed legislation allowing the Parliamentary Commissioner for
Human Rights’ Office to carry out the functions of a National Preventive
Mechanism, in fulfilment of Ukraine’s obligations under the Optional Protocol
to the UN Convention against Torture. Mikhail Belikov, a retired miner, was tortured by police officers
from Petrovskiy District police station in Donetsk
on 17 June. He was approached by three duty police officers in a park for
drinking in public. He reported that he was beaten in the park and then taken
to the Petrovskiy District sub-police station,
where a fourth duty police officer raped him with a police baton while three
other policemen held him down. A more senior officer told him to forget what
had happened, and asked him to pay 1,500 hryvna (€144) to be released. He
agreed to pay and was released without charge. That night his condition
worsened considerably. He was taken to hospital where doctors found that he
had suffered serious internal injuries, and he would require a temporary
colostomy. At the end of the year, three police officers were on trial for
five separate incidents of beating and extortion, going back to 2009,
including the torture of Mikhail Belikov. Two of
the officers were charged with torture, under Article 127 of the Criminal
Code. ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Report to the Ukrainian
Government on the visit to Ukraine carried out by the European Committee for
the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
(CPT)from 8 to 21 December 2017 Council of Europe,
Strasbourg, 6 September 2018 [accessed 16 May
2019] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY -- However, the
delegation received a
considerable number of
recent and credible
allegations from detained persons
regarding the excessive
use of force
during apprehension by
the police (mostly plainclothes operational officers,
more rarely uniformed
patrol police officers), as
well as allegations of
physical ill-treatment after
being brought under
control, mainly consisting
of kicks, punches and truncheon
blows, as well as too tight and prolonged handcuffing. Overall, the
delegation gained the
impression that, compared
to the findings
of the 2016
visit, the severity of
the ill-treatment alleged
had diminished. However, the frequency of allegations
remained at a worrying level, especially in Kyiv. Unfortunately, the
unacceptable practice of unrecorded detentions had not been
fully eliminated, despite specific
recommendations to this
effect repeatedly made
by the Committee
after previous visits. In
addition, persons concerned
were allegedly subjected
to informal questioning
without benefiting from the safeguards provided for by law. Freedom House Country
Report - Political Rights: 3 Civil Liberties: 2 Status: Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/ukraine [accessed 15
February 2013] LONG
URL ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] Police torture,
overcrowded prisons, and poor conditions continued to be a problem in 2008,
according to Human Rights Watch. However, the Criminal Justice and Law
Enforcement Authorities reform, signed by Yushchenko
on April 8, sought to bring Ukraine’s system up to international standards;
it particularly focuses on improving pretrial detention procedures and
strengthening victim’s rights. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61682.htm [accessed 15
February 2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61682.htm [accessed 7 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – While the law
prohibits such practices, police frequently employed severe violence against
persons in custody. On September 24,
Amnesty International released a report charging that law enforcement
officers routinely extracted confessions and testimonies from detainees
through force, often resorting to torture, and criticized the authorities for
failing to clamp down on such behavior by police and prison officials.
According to an August 2004 Fifth Channel television program, police
frequently beat detainees, hung them upside down, and doused them with water.
According to the program, police officers tortured individuals to extract
confessions or simply to get money; a lawyer interviewed on the program said
he had been taken into custody and beaten until he agreed to pay
approximately $5 thousand (UAH 25 thousand) to a policeman. According to a
survey of former police detainees published in October by the Kharkiv‑based Institute for Social Research,
approximately 62 percent reported that they had been ill‑treated while
in detention in Kharkiv. More than 44 percent said
police officers had twisted their arms, legs, or necks during interrogation,
while nearly 33 percent reported that they had been kicked or punched by
police officers. During an October
11 meeting with representatives from the Council of Europe, Human Rights
Ombudsman Nina Karpachova acknowledged that torture
continued to occur in pretrial detention facilities. During the year
authorities stepped up efforts to prosecute police officers who abused
persons in detention. According to the media and Minister of Internal Affairs
Yuriy Lutsenko, as of
September 1, the PGO had opened 496 criminal cases against police officers
for detention‑related abuses, compared to 209 such cases opened during
all of 2004. One human rights NGO official reported that, as a consequence of
greater scrutiny of police behavior, police engaging in mistreatment of
detainees increasingly used masks or hoods to avoid identification. There were no
developments in a number of 2003 incidents, including the torture of
detainees by police officers in Poltava, the abuse of a criminal suspect by a
senior police officer in Zaporizhzhya, and the
severe beating of a prisoner in a Donetsk Region prison which resulted in the
amputation of the prisoner's feet. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
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ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century-
Ukraine", http://gvnet.com/torture/Ukraine.htm, [accessed <date>] |
