A legal brief prepared by the Open Society Justice Initiative to assist legalpractitioners inadvocatingand litigatingprisoners’ right to access health care during the COVID-19 pandemic

Regarding the conclusion of the main scientific-analytical department of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) on the Ukrainian draft law “on the amnesty of convicts (to prevent the spread of the acute respiratory infectious disease COVID-19, caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2)”.

Major Ukrainian human rights groups have called on President Volodymyr Zelensky and parliament to finally adopt an amnesty bill that has been gathering dust for almost two months, despite the obvious need for it due to the pandemic

We would like to draw the attention to the problem of the spread of COVID-19 in penitentiary institutions, propose particular actions which could contribute to prevention of uncontrolled spread of the disease and develop the proposals which could be useful during their implementation in the practical activities of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine.

We are on the verge of an outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in penitentiaries. There is an urgent need to test staff and prisoners in institutions where the disease has already been registered, and to consider as soon as possible the amnesty and parole bills submitted to the Verkhovna Rada on April 27.

We have received the information about the situation with counteracting the epidemic in 36 penitentiary institutions. Some institutions differ significantly for the better – Chortkiv penal institution No.19, Ivano-Frankivsk penal institution No.12. The situation is much worse in other institutions.

The State Criminal Enforcement Service confirmed the presence of COVID-19 in its institutions.

Information on confirmed cases of the COVID-19 in prisons was provided. Also we give the recommendations of what to do - as quickly as possible. 

This is known that the Ministry of Justice is considering three scenarios of the progress of the events . The third scenario is a large-scale outbreak. In our opinion, the third scenario is the most likely given the current situation in the SIZOs and the PI .

In Ukraine today, the most important issue in countering the spread of COVID-19 in penitentiary institutions should be the release of prisoners. The most common and universal practice is the release based on the amnesty law and the parole of convicted persons.

The outbreak of disease among convicts will be very ripping. It will not be a small fire that can be controlled, and not even a blaze in the house. It will be a great tragedy – a huge fire of the highest degree of danger that will capture everyone.

Kharkiv prisoners who were brutally beaten after complaining of torture are now facing physical reprisals if they do not withdraw their formal complaints

Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group lawyers and monitors have been blocked from entering Oleksiivska Correctional Colony No. 25 in Kharkiv since a believed punitive operation on 8 January against prisoners who had complained of torture

Over quarter of a century after the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine is still applying a punitive norm dating back to Soviet times that makes it possible to add years to prisoners’ sentences for minor infringements of regulations

Anna Solopova, a young woman suffering from a serious oncological illness has been beaten and deprived of life-saving medical treatment after she successfully upheld her right to such care at the European Court of Human Rights

On a ’hospital’ for prisoners, where those with serious illnesses receive no treatment, and where there may well be ’paying patients’ without any identifiable illnesses

An extraordinary relict from Soviet times makes it possible for Ukrainian prisoners to have up to three years added to their prison sentence for the most trivial of misdemeanours 

In August alone, five prisoners are known to have died in prisons under the control of the self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [LPR].  Two of the men are believed to have committed suicide, while two other men found in the sewage system reportedly had marks suggesting that they had been subjected to physical violence

This publication is devoted to the situation of detainees who are in custody in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts and were deprived of liberty before the beginning of the military conflict.

Hryhory Larionov was subjected to torture while illegally held in Russian prison colonies because of his refusal to take on Russian citizenship.  He is now planning to demand compensation from the Russian Federation both for the torture, and for the fact that he has been prevented from returning to Crimea.  He says that all prisoners who reject Russian citizenship face particularly bad treatment.