Torture in Ukraine

According to Human Rights Encyclopedia the Ukrainian government does a poor job to protect human rights of a local population. For example, Ukrainian police well-known for its brutality against arrested and detained citizens which often constitutes acts of torture. Ukrainian detention facilities are overcrowded and poorly maintained. The most part of the prison's infrastructure do not meet international standards and became reservoirs for infectious diseases (tuberculosis and HIV).[1] Amnesty International reported that the climate of torture in the Ukrainian prisons fostered by impunity of security officers who use the torture to extract confessions completely ignoring presumption of innocence.[2]

Ukraine signed the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture on 2 May 1996 and ratified it on 5 May 1997. The convention came into effect on 1 September 1997, but the cooperation of Ukraine with European Committee for the Prevention of Torture always used to be a persistent problem. On many occasions the European Committee was not provided with a required documents and its recommendations were not implemented by the Ukrainian side. In the same time there were multiple concerns and allegations of ill-treatment of detainees by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.[3] Some experts emphasize that conditions in Ukraine's police custody have never been good and there were no visible improvements since collapse of the Soviet Union.[4] In addition to this, the investigations of police brutality became de facto impossible and the only administrative body for police oversight was closed. Interestingly, Belarus and the Ukraine are the only European nations that have not implemented the independent torture prevention system OPCAT (Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture).[4]

Regarding this issue British expert Taras Kuzio pointed out that the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs won a notorious reputation worst of any other security force in Ukraine. Mistreatment of citizens, their torture and abuses of rights are common and a little has changed since the Soviet times in the methods of policing.[5] In April 2010 the Council of Europe reviewed around 6,000 complaints about torture of which the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies only examined 200 cases and all these decisions were biased in favor of torturers. As a result the Council of Europe condemned the lack of investigations, related to police torture in Ukraine stating "Few police officers are ever called to account for their unlawful behavior; even fewer are ever convicted."[2]

In 2017 Amnesty International reported that during the War in Donbass there were overwhelming evidences of ongoing war crimes, including torture and mass murders of prisoners.[6] Particularly, in Eastern Ukraine Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) operates special hidden prisons for alleged Donbass rebels where unacknowledged detention is accompanied by widespread torture and different kinds of human rights abuses. Ukrainian government tried to deny the existence of the blacksites, but it was confirmed by multiple reports of UN monitoring mission in Ukraine, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.[7][8][9] Dutch journalist Chris Kaspar de Ploeg in his book "Ukraine in the Crossfire" said about the prisons that their "practices happen completely in the dark" emphasizing that the supporting evidence about the facilities has been documented independently by the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.[10] In 2018 Amnesty International concluded that "The investigation into the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) for its alleged secret prisons failed to make any progress. Law enforcement officials continued to use torture and other ill-treatment".[11]

Ukrainian volunteer battalion "Tornado" became another infamous example of a mass torture and sadistic practices used by Ukrainian paramilitary forces. According to Der Spiegel the prisoners captured by "Tornado" were held in basement, stripped totally naked, placed on a concrete wall, doused with water and tortured by applying electricity to testicles, genitals and other body parts. Also some prisoners were forced to rape each other under threat of death.[12] According to what has been videotaped by the officers of the "Tornado" there were a local civilians among their victims including women.[13] The investigation revealed that the commander of "Tornado" had several prior criminal convictions, but for his political supporters it wasn't a reason to worry about.[12] The absence of war crimes charges (including rape, murder, cruel treatment, sexual violence) remains as another unexplained question. The similar pattern has been documented in other investigated cases of Ukrainian atrosities.[14]

It is highly likely that the volunteer battalions are responsible for the most of the war crimes committed by the Ukrainian forces. The personnel of the units dominated by neonazi was reported by international and local organizations in connection with abductions, ill-treatment, unlawful detentions, property thefts and other kinds of offenses.[15] Despite of the exceptionally serious nature of the crime activities, the Ukrainian civil society prefers to ignore them in public discussions. In the connection to the settled tendency Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union reminds that the torture is strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law and no circumstances may be used to justify it.[16]

• Bicknell, Christine; Evans, Malcolm; Morgan, Rod (2018). Preventing torture in Europe. Council of Europe. ISBN 978-92-871-8748-2.
• Hahn, Gordon (2018). Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West and the "New Cold War". London: Sharpe Reference. ISBN 978-1-4766-2875-2.
• Kuzio, Taras (2015). Ukraine: Democratization, Corruption, and the New Russian Imperialism. Praeger, ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-3502-5.
• de Ploeg, Chris (2017). Ukraine in the Crossfire. Atlanta: Clarity Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9978965-4-1.
• Skutsch, Carl; Lewis, James (2001). The Human Rights Encyclopedia. London: Sharpe Reference. ISBN 0-7656-8023-8.
• The Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law in Ukraine (PDF). Kyiv: Global Rights Compliance LLP. 2016.
• Unlawful detentions and torture committed by Ukrainian side in the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine (PDF). Kyiv: Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union. 2017. ISBN 978-966-97584-4-6.