At a press conference to mark the first 100 days under the new management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs there was a lot to say and very little of it positive There have, for example, been more infringements of the right to peaceful assembly than during 2007-2009 altogether

Members of the Public Council on Human Rights attached to the Ministry of Internal Affairs have been forced to address this open letter to the Minister since none of their questions has been answered. They ask the Minister to appoint a date for the next meeting of the Public Council.

Human rights organizations are demanding an open investigation into the death of student Ihor Indylo in a Kyiv police station and are sceptical of the measures thus far planned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs

The Department for Monitoring Human Rights in the Work of the Police took five years to create. It was dissolved within a month despite providing important results in fighting rights abuse within the police force

The reaction of the Minister of Internal Affairs to the wave of protest over the death in police custody of Ihor Indylo, a young student, is disturbingly inadequate especially given the real problems which the police must address

Around 200 students and others held a demonstration outside the Shevchenkivsky Police Station demanding that those responsible for the death of a fellow student be brought to justice and for an end to the use of torture by the police

Following wide publicity and entirely conflicting reports, the Shevchenkivsky District Prosecutor’s Office has initiated a criminal investigation against police officers over the death of a 19-year-old student in the Shevchenkivsky District Police Station

A 19-year-old student has died in very worrying circumstances. The Kyiv Police Department has claimed that he died in the Shevchenkivsky District Police Station after falling in a drunken state. There are however conflicting stories

I would like to ask one key question: how many trials do we have to still go through before we understand that the old Soviet model of subjugating university rectors by making them dependent is a relic of a totalitarian era which we have supposedly put aside?

The British journalist Economist has drawn attention to certain behaviour by relations between Russian and Ukrainian Security Services, and, noting the recent visit by the SBU to the Ukrainian Catholic University says that “the difference between its tactics and those of the Russia’s FSB seems to be narrowing”

The Instructions on carrying out internal investigations state that if a law enforcement officer involved in the case does not wish to testify, he doesn’t have to which is the point at which all internal investigations end

The police continue to beat people, even applying new forms and methods of beating, while the Prosecutor’s Office is good at finding ways of not bringing police officers to answer

The traffic police used pressure on private transport firms to stop supporters of the opposition reaching Kyiv on 11 May. The scale and similarity of pressure in different parts of the country suggest that the instructions came from Kyiv

On the creation, problems and achievements of the Department for the Monitoring of Human Rights in the Work of the Police and the decision by the new leadership to dissolve it despite bemusement and protest from Ukrainian and international civic organizations

Opposition political parties whose members were questioned on 6 May claim that mass-scale pressure has begun on the opposition, while the President recognizes only “constructive opposition”. A representative of the Razumkov Centre warns that such rhetoric and measures could damage the regime itself

Yevhen Zakharov was asked by the newspaper “Commentaries” why he believed the Department for the Monitoring of Human Rights in the Work of the Police had been closed, and what the consequences might be

A baffling way of responding to the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union’s complaint over the failure by the Minister of Internal Affairs to heed apparent advice from the President to not economize on human rights

Results of a study carried out by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation as part of their “Ukrainian Democratic Barometer” project both of public perception regarding their rights and of human rights organizations’ assessment of the situation in 2009

The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union and Kharkiv Human Rights Group have published an open letter to President Yanukovych expressing their concern over a worsening in the human rights situation during the 50 days since he was elected President

Judging by a disturbingly misleading report on the President’s website, one feels that the President and his Men are none too adept at differentiating real human rights defenders from those on paper. Or hope that we don’t know the difference