Human Rights in Offside

Photo from a protest against police torture

A cordial invitation to the opening at 10.00 Friday, 8 June 2012 of the “Human Rights Offside” Exhibition, timed to coincide with the Euro 2012 Championship. The exhibition has been organized by the Centre for Civil Liberties in partnership with the Czech NGO People in Need.

The exhibition will provide insight about the following:

Political repression and whether the country is slipping back into the past

Why people are tortured by the police

Who has an interest on encroachments of freedom of speech

What the judiciary is turning into

Social inequality in Ukraine – how can people survive?

The exhibition will be opened by writer, philosopher and former political prisoner Yevhen Sverstyuk, writer Irena Karpa, the Ambassador of the Czech Republic Ivan Počuch, and representatives of the International Minority Rights Group, the Moscow Helsinki Group and others.

It will also be attended by people who have direct experience of human rights abuses in Ukraine, including Rostyslav Shaposhnykov, Head of the Dorozhny Kontrol website which monitors the work of the traffic police; the mother of a young man tortured by the police; a youth activist whom the police tried to abduct during a protest action.

Partners of the Exhibition include: the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union; the Kharkiv Human Rights Group; the Kharkiv Youth Human Rights Group; the Association of Ukrainian Human Rights Monitors of Law Enforcement  Agencies; the Leva Society; the Sim Centre for Legal and Political Research; Donetsk Memorial; the Donetsk Regional Branch of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, and others.

The general partner of the exhibition in Kyiv is the Scientific and Cultural Centre ATMASFERA 360.

Information support is being provided by the Centre for Human Rights Information, while information partners are Ukrainski Novyny and Portal tochka.net.

The Exhibition can be viewed from 8 – 10 June between 10.00 and 20.00.  Free of charge.  It will then travel to the Ukrainian cities hosting Euro 2012.  There will be open air exhibitions on the eve of the football matches in Lviv on 12 June; Kharkiv – 16 June and Donetsk – 22 June.

As well as 90 minutes for a football match, find a few minutes to look at our nine stands which show the most important human rights infringements in Ukraine over the last two years.

Venue in Kyiv         The ATMASFERA 360 Centre, 573 Vasylkivska St