• Topics / Freedom of movement
• Topics / Social and economic rights
Traffic Police again used against demonstrators
According to the head of a local human rights group, Ruslan Zorya, around 20 coaches from the Cherkasy region with people wishing to join the demonstration in Kyiv against the Tax Code were prevented by the traffic police. Mr Zorya asserts that the traffic police stopped each coach on the exit from the city. If they didn’t have documents for transporting people along an established route, the coach was not let through. Of the approximately 30 coaches which tried to leave, only about 10 got through the check.
The Head of the Department of Prophylactic Work of the Cherkasy Traffic Police, Yaroslav Vorony, stated that there had been no applications to receive the relevant permits for carrying out non-regular passenger trips to Kyiv. He claimed that in accordance with a Joint Order of the Ministries of Transport and Internal Affairs, the traffic police of the region had begun controlling coach movement during the night. On 21 and 22 November they had stopped non-regular coaches until 6 a.m. with them then following their planned route along the following roads: Kyiv – Odessa, Boryspil – Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv – Znamyanka.
He asserted also that on different routes they had checked 572 and found that 66 did not meant technical requirements, saying that in 19 cases the things wrong could cause danger on the roads. There were also 96 violations found, and 4 vehicles trying to transport people without the relevant documents, another 10 cases where they didn’t have relevant information in their road lists, and three cases where they supposedly didn’t have a warrant of fitness stamp.
It is worth noting that this time there is no mention of drunken drivers. At the end of July, on the eve of an important religious festival, coaches carrying believers faithful to the Kyiv Patriarchate were also stopped both leaving various cities (Odessa, Sumy and many others) or prevented from driving into Kyiv, supposedly because traffic police were able to detect without any equipment that their drivers were drunk.
The number of transport firms with non-roadworthy coaches and mini-vans, reported trying to leave Cherkasy, Lviv and many other cities to reach the demonstration in Kyiv would be frightening were it not so entirely improbable.
New information reported here