The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Environmental Policy has called on the Prosecutor General to check the legality of the decision by the Kharkiv City Council of 19 May to fell trees in Gorky Park

The Director of Euro 2012 Martin Callen has addressed an official letter to the Ukrainian Government asking it to investigate the situation which has arisen around Gorky Park in Kharkiv and to inform of specific measures taken to resolve the problem

The Kharkiv authorities, having run roughshod over residents’ rights and the law, then resorted to a pitifully unconvincing imitation of public participation

AI considers that two activists sentenced over peaceful protest in Gorky Park, Andrei Yevarnitsky and Denis Chernega, are prisoners of conscience, who have been sentenced for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and has called for their immediate and unconditional release

The Minister of Internal Affairs, Anatoly Mohylyov considers the decision by the Kharkiv authorities to fell trees in Gorky Park to have been lawful

It is vital that the authorities know that lawlessness will not go unnoticed or unpunished. Please help by showing solidarity on 19 June in Kharkiv if you can, or by informing others of what is happening!

Not only are the court rulings issued against peaceful protesters defending Gorky Park a travesty of justice, but the fundamental right to appeal during a fixed time seems dangerously dependent on the court’s whim

On 14 June the Dzherzhynsky District Court in Kharkiv found two of the peaceful protesters detained by police in Gorky Park on 28 May guilty of disobeying a police officer (Article 185 of the Code of Administrative Offences]

It is vital that we demonstrate to the crushing of peaceful protest in Gorky Park has no justification in a democratic country and that such actions must not go unpunished. Please add your voice to our appeal to the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner

The fact that all four are different is indicative of the grotesque absurdity of a situation where police escort thugs who beat up peaceful protesters, while the police see fit to detain only the protesters

Recent events with the crushing of civic protest in Kharkiv demonstrate a serious worsening in the country’s human rights situation. They arouse great concern due to the wide-scale nature of unlawful actions by the local authorities and police which risk going unpunished

The author asks his journalist colleagues whether they can be sure, ignoring major events like the crushing of civic protest in Kharkiv’s Gorky Park whether others will not be as silent when it is their turn to defend their rights

Despite clear indications from the Environment Ministry that the tree-felling is illegal, in the early hours of this morning, thugs were brought in to assault activists defending the trees. The last trees were cut down, their defenders driven away with force while the police did nothing to protect those under attack, and even detained some of them

The most crucial piece of information is that the road is not, as claimed, marked out on the General Plan of the City up till 2026,

The Ministry for Environmental Protection has confirmed that the Kharkiv authorities have been misleading the public and that the felling of trees to make way for a road and hotel complex is totally illegal.

The Kharkiv Regional Environmental Inspectorate has told journalists that it is carrying out a check to determine whether environmental legislation has been observed during the feeling of trees to make way for a road through Gorky Park

Wanton destruction of century-old trees in Kharkiv’s Gorky Park and lawless violence apparently countenanced by both the city authorities and the police have outraged environmental, human rights and media organizations. Leading environmental groups have called on UEFA to exclude Kharkiv from the cities hosting Euro-2012. Football is quite simply not worth the price

In an open appeal addressed to the President, the Head of the environmental NGO “Pechenihy” explains that for over a week Kharkiv residents have been defending their Park from their own City Council, with the world following the events

Attempts by Kharkiv residents to protect the trees have been met with overt violence from the police, the tree-fellers and unidentified “municipal security” men. In all of this Ministry of Internal Affairs officers have failed to intervene and have calmly watched as young people, protesting against unlawful actions, are beaten.

Not only is the tree-felling unlawful and in breach of the Aarhus Convention and Ukrainian legislation, but it has also been accompanied by acts of violence either by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or with no reaction from the police