MIA sticks to its guns over named tickets

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has sent a letter to the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union regarding its moves to reintroduce named railway tickets.

Despite the fact that the Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, V. Korniyenko, recently stated that there is no ticket touting at present and that there is no need for named tickets, the MIA remains adamant that Ukrainians are still engaging in such ticket speculation.

Another interesting argument given for introducing named railway tickets is that this will supposedly help in holding EURO 2012. Interesting, in the first place, since specialists predict that the move will lead to massive queues, and in the second, the football club has been held in a number of countries and none has introduced such a system.

The MIA letter also claims that Ukraine, in order to observe rights during railway transportation, must equal such universally known countries in observance of human rights” as the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Armenia.

The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union stresses again that police treatment of all passengers like potential criminals is humiliating and yet again demonstrates that the MIA is founding its activities on disrespect and infringements of fundamental human rights.