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The Tribunal for Putin (T4P) global initiative was set up in response to the all-out war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022.
• Topics / Freedom of peaceful assembly
• Topics / Social and economic rights

Riot Police use heavyhanded measures against Chornobyl clean-up protesters

29.11.2011   
The Kharkiv man, Vladimir Proskurin, who lost consciousness during an action by Berkut riot officers against peaceful Chornobyl clean-up protesters in Kyiv would seem to have been deliberately targeted for arrest, possibly in connection with blunt criticism of the government

 

There were reports in the media on Tuesday that Vladimir Proskurin, a member of the Chornobyl clean-up workers’ movement, had lost consciousness during the picket of the Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv.

Mr Proskurin is well-known in Kharkiv as a person not in any way prone to extremist actions, so the Kharkiv Human Rights Group contacted his colleagues.  They recount that Vladimir Proskurin was among a group of protesters when Berkut riot police deliberately, following instructions from their commanders, pushed through the crowd, trying specifically to detain Proskurin and put him into their van. The protesters tried to resist the unlawful detention of their colleagues. The Berkut men in return tried so hard that Proskurin lost consciousness as a result.

Mr Proskurin and his colleagues link the attention to him as due to the fact that yesterday, at a meeting of the working group in the Cabinet of Ministers, he told them straight out what he thinks of the Cabinet of Ministers’s actions, and of the Prime Minister personally.

As reported earlier, it was Proskurin’s home which was visited by unidentified individuals when he was taking part in the picket of the Pension Fund in Kharkiv. 

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