Arkady Bushchenko, Defence lawyer and Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union discusses positive features of the new Criminal Procedure Code as well as fears of retrograde steps by those who dislike its progressive ideology

The “Black Committee” says that four of its activists have been sentenced to 1-2 years imprisonment over the posters pasted up in Lviv in June 2011 with President Yanukovych with a gunshot to the head

Mykhailo Horyn, former dissident and political prisoner, human rights defender and civic and political figures passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning. He was eighty two.

Allegations of police brutality against people protesting against the controversial conviction of the Pavlichenko father and son for murder not investigated, the police department CCTV footage “automatically deleted” …

The Congress of National Communities of Ukraine has issued a statement regarding the actions by Stalinists on 21 December. At the same time it is reported that the Crimean Tatars involved in obstructing them may be charged with hooliganism.

On 27 December peaceful protesters in Kyiv were prevented from holding a demonstration outside the Prosecutor General’s Office in support of Olaola Femi, the Nigerian student in custody for over a year following a racist attack in which he tried to defend himself.

Each of us can become a victim of the state and in today’s Ukraine nobody can guarantee that his or her rights will not be violated. However the situation is not hopeless and there are mechanisms for defending a person the Head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Yevhen Zakharov says

A Chernihiv court has yet again cancelled the decision issued by the Prosecutor’s Office to terminate criminal cases over the bodily injuries inflicted by police officers on Mykhailo Koval and his family

Two men have finally been released from custody after six years in SIZO on the basis of a “confession” beaten out of one of them and despite howling discrepancies and infringements of their right to defence

In return for targeted sanctions on Russian crooks and abusers, the Kremlin will retaliate against Russian children. To be precise, against the most vulnerable category of Russian children: orphans in need of adoption.

Members of the Civic Solidarity Platform condemn the December 19 raid by plain-clothed Russian police on the premises of the Human Rights House-Voronezh

Chornobyl workers are not being paid, while the enterprises within the Exclusion Zone are not getting all the money needed for basic needs. The need for proper funding at this, of all sites, needs no explanation

The conditions for the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement articulated at Monday’s meeting of EU Foreign Ministers were unequivocal, the headlines in the media often worryingly off the mark

Other laureates of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union’s annual anti-award for worst human rights offenders in 2012 include the Central Election Committee and President Yanukovych and Parliamentary Speaker Lytvyn

Overview of the human rights situation in Ukraine in 2012

During the year a group of NGOs investigated how measures from the anti-corruption programme were being carried out. On 28 November they announced their conclusion – that the programme exists only on paper.

Around 50 Ukrainians with disabilities marked International Day of Persons with Disabilities on 3 December by staging a protest over inaction and indifference to their problems, including from the President and Prime Minister

The latest application to the European Court of Human Rights over torture and inhuman treatment which Kharkiv Human Rights Group have prepared involves a five-month-old baby – S. and his 22-year-old mother K.

“Ukraine fatigue” is palpable in the wake of the parliamentary elections, however two more dangerous laws just signed into force make it clear that turning away cannot be an option