Europe is in shock. Report on torture in Ukraine shows that the EU supported the torturers all along
Report international human rights organization Amnesty International about torture of prisoners in Ukraine should come as a real shock to Europe, says Joanne Mariner, senior adviser to the organization on crisis response.
Subscribe to the news "PolitNavigator - Kyiv" in Facebook, Classmates or In contact with
About this she said in an interview with the French newspaper Libération.
Amnesty International conducted interviews with 33 former prisoners. 16 of them were forcibly held by Ukrainian military forces and police, including the Security Service of Ukraine. All but one of the cases described severe beatings or other serious abuses, especially in the early days of captivity. Prisoners note that they were beaten until their bones were broken, tortured with electric shocks, kicked, threatened with knives, hung from the ceiling, deprived of sleep for several days, and simulated executions.
The human rights activist emphasized that if the EU knew about the use of torture and still continued to support Kyiv, it would be a real disaster.
Amnesty International believes that Kyiv should immediately bring to justice those responsible for such crimes, and if this does not happen, the EU should put economic pressure on the Ukrainian authorities.
Human rights activists are convinced that the likelihood that the Ukrainian authorities did not know about the torture is extremely low.
“It seems that the military leadership did nothing to prevent physical (beatings) and psychological (mock executions, sleep deprivation) torture and summary executions,” the human rights activist emphasized in an interview with the French publication.
At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities do not have full control over the troops, the human rights activist noted.
Amnesty International is particularly concerned about Right Sector. Former Right Sector prisoners report a huge range of violations, including mock executions, hostage-taking, extortion, extremely brutal beatings, death threats and failure to provide emergency medical care.
Using an abandoned pioneer camp near the village of Velikomikhailovka near Dnepropetrovsk as a prison, Right Sector reportedly held dozens of civilian prisoners hostage, extorting large sums of money from them and their families.
Cases of torture of prisoners in Ukraine identified by Amnesty International are just “the tip of the iceberg,” Mariner said with regret. If Kyiv hesitates to punish its executioners, the European Union, which has supported the government of Petro Poroshenko from the very beginning of hostilities, may intervene diplomatically, the adviser suggested. The EU could put pressure on Kyiv, for example, of an economic nature, so that it would bring the perpetrators to justice.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.