On children being enlisted for political rallies

Open letter to the Authorised Human Rights Representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (the Human Rights Ombudsperson)

N.I. Karpachova

Dear Nina Ivanivna,

On 4 April the evening news on Channel 1+1, then later the newspaper “Ukrainska moloda”, reported that

40 school children from the town of Chyhyryn in the Cherkasy region had been taken by the city representatives of the Party of the Regions to a political rally in Kyiv.

The reports can be found at the following sites:

http://osvita.org.ua/news/27272.html

http://umoloda.kiev.ua/number/893/113/32524/

In my opinion this warrants your intervention since there have been violations of Article 39 of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of peaceful assembly, Article 51 of the Law on Education and a number of articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

I would ask you to inform me of the results of your investigation into this incident and to take those measures set down in the Law on the Human Rights Ombudsperson to ensure that these seemingly outrageous incidents do not occur in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Yevhen Zakharov

Co-Chair of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group