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Human Rights in Ukraine. Website of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group |
While cheering that the Rivne Court of Appeal has agreed that 16-year-old Darya Kotsyuruba did not infringe the law by standing on Rivne’s Independence Square with a placard calling for the impeachment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it is disturbing that this absurd ‘case’ should have reached appeal level | detail
Two young Rivne residents ended up at the police station facing administrative charges on 25 May over their peaceful protest with four placards, one of them calling for President Zelensky’s impeachment. The President has himself now intervened | detail
On 8 April, Zarema Mamutova and her daughter-in-law Aliye, were detained in Bakhchysarai while the elderly lady stood with a placard reading: “My son is no terrorist. Why 17 years?”. This was the horrific sentence passed on her 43-year-old son Enver Mamutov, a recognized political prisoner, on 23 December. | detail
Ukraine’s ‘Communist Party# has announced that it is putting forward its leader Petro Symonenko as presidential candidate in the coming elections. The announcement has aroused bemusement, since it comes over three years after a much publicized ruling banning this very same party. | detail
Activists for transgender rights were forced to disband a demonstration in Kyiv on November 18 after counterdemonstrators assaulted several protesters and attacked a Canadian journalist trying to cover the event. | detail
In the first week after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, a protester was seen holding a banner with the words: ‘Supporters of Putin! Under Putin, you won’t speak Russian, you will be SILENT in Russian! Within months, such protests had become inconceivable | detail
One of the main factions in the governing coalition is planning to table a bill on registering ‘foreign agents’ in Ukraine. The move is purportedly aimed at protecting ‘national interests’, however human rights groups are unconvinced | detail
It is becoming increasingly clear that there was no legal justification for the dispersal of a tent camp of protesters from outside the Verkhovna Rada on 3 March and the detaining of over 100 activists. The Head of the Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Secretariat also reports that the nature of the bodily injuries sustained during the dispersal suggests that the police used excessive force. | detail
28-year-old Elmaz Akimova was harassed on 25 February for her peaceful protest over the “shocking vandalism under the guise of restoration” which is destroying the Khan’s Palace in Bakhchysarai | detail
In the latest attack on the Crimean Solidarity civic initiative, a huge contingent of Russian OMON riot police have disrupted the monthly meeting held to discuss ways of helping political prisoners and their families. There was no real attempt to come up with a credible reason for what was clearly an attempt at intimidation - one that follows the arrests of several Crimea Solidarity activists on trumped-up charges. | detail
A planned remembrance gathering on January 19 in honour of slain Sevastopol journalist Anastasia Baburova and Russian lawyer Stanislav Markelov was disrupted on January 19 by thugs from the far-right C14 group. Civic activists monitoring the police officers’ failure to protect people at a peaceful gathering believe that their behaviour indicates disturbing bias. | detail
Police in Russian-occupied Crimea have on several occasions tried to justify detaining Crimean Tatars holding legal solitary pickets by claiming that their protest “aroused dissatisfaction among the Slavonic population”. | detail
By the end of a wave of new repressive prosecutions, Russia will have extorted close on one million roubles from up to 86 Crimean Tatars whose protests were in full compliance with the occupying state’s draconian anti-protest legislation. | detail
Rustem Osmanov, an activist from the civic initiative Crimea Solidarity, was taken from his home by unidentified men without insignia on Monday morning. In comparison with at least three activists who are facing huge sentences for showing solidarity with political prisoners in Russian-occupied Crimea and their families, Osmanov was ‘lucky’ in merely being fined 10 thousand roubles on trumped up charges | detail
In its zeal to prevent the truth being told about its political repression in occupied Crimea, Russia is even flouting its own legislation. At very least three Crimean Tatars are now facing administrative charges for entirely legal single-person pickets on October 14. | detail
24-year-old Shevket Razzakov is facing criminal charges in Russian-occupied Crimea for spitting at a Russian National Guard sniper during the armed search of another Crimean Tatar. None of the officers involved in beating up peaceful activists and hospitalizing one of them during the events that day is under investigation. | detail
Crimean Tatars have reacted to the new arrests on ‘terrorism’ charges of civic activists in Russian-occupied Crimea by holding single-person pickets with placards reading: “Crimean Tatars are not terrorists. Give children their fathers back” and “Fabricating criminal cases – it’s this that’s TERROR”. . | detail
Police controlled by the country which is hosting the World Football Cup in 2018 banned young Crimean Tatars from holding a football match on September 16, and forced them to remove the Crimean Tatar flag. The match which had already begun was not allowed to continue, and three people were taken aside for ‘questioning’, including the trainer.. | detail
‘Only’ two Ukrainian activists were detained in Russian-occupied Crimea on Ukraine’s Independence Day. That, however, was probably because most Ukrainians celebrated the day with family and friends. As one Ukrainian put it, coming out to any kind of event could cost you your liberty. | detail
At least eight people were detained in Russian-occupied Crimea on August 14 for holding peaceful single-person pickets, or for photographing the police detaining the picketers, with one person - 64-year-old Yarikul Davlatov - now facing charges of holding an ’unauthorized meeting’, For many Crimean Tatars there was no choice but to come out onto the street, after the unwarranted arrest and jailing last week of 76-year-old Server Karametov. Like him, all the picketers held signs stating clearly: “Putin, our children are not terrorists! They are not extremists either!”. | detail
