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Violations of Human Rights by the Rebels in Eastern Ukraine Menschenrechtsverletzungen durch die Rebellen in der Ostukraine Ole Solvang, The Dead and the Living in
Lugansk, Sept., 4, 2014. Human Rights Watch […] But the rebels bear responsibility as
well. Outgoing heavy artillery fire could be heard in several places in the
city, including near a hospital, which exposed civilians to the risk of
return fire. Under the laws of war, warring parties must take all possible
measures to avoid endangering civilians, such as, where feasible, not
locating military targets within or near densely populated areas. In other
places, such as in villages to the north of Luhansk currently under
government control, Human Rights Watch has documented that rebels used
explosive weapons in a way that injured and killed civilians and destroyed
houses, shops, and infrastructure. […] http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/04/dead-and-living-luhansk This text is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 United States (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 US) license. Ukraine: Rising Civilian Toll in Luhansk,
Sept. 1, 2014. Human Rights Watch […] Insurgent forces were most likely responsible
for an August 10 attack on Krasnyi Yar, a small village north-east of
Luhansk, which injured at least two civilians. Witnesses said the Aydar
battalion, a volunteer unit of armed citizens that fights together with
Ukrainian armed forces, had just established control over the village and set
up a checkpoint when salvos of Grad rockets hit the village from the south,
from the direction of insurgent-controlled territory. […] http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/01/ukraine-rising-civilian-toll-luhansk This text is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 United States (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 US) license. Ukraine: Rebel Forceds Detain, Torture
Civilians, Aug. 28, 2014. Human Rights Watch Dire Concern for
Safety of Captives Berlin) – Russian-backed insurgent forces in eastern Ukraine are arbitrarily detaining civilians and subjecting them to torture,
degrading treatment, and forced labor. They also have detained civilians for
use as hostages. Beginning in April 2014, armed
fighters supporting the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and
Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) have captured hundreds of civilians,
targeting presumed critics, including journalists, pro-Ukrainian political
activists, religious activists, and in some cases their family members. “Pro-Russian insurgents are
regularly committing horrendous crimes,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “There are
solid grounds to be seriously concerned about the safety and well-being of
anyone held by insurgent forces in eastern Ukraine.” In August Human Rights Watch
researchers in eastern Ukraine documented 20 cases in which rebel fighters
had captured civilians, and interviewed 12 people who said their captors had
beaten, kicked, stabbed, or lacerated them, burned them with cigarettes, or
subjected them to mock executions. At least six were used as hostages either
for ransom or to exchange with captured insurgents held by Ukrainian
authorities. Another is apparently awaiting exchange. Three people whose cases Human
Rights Watch documented remain in captivity in Donetsk. Former detainees told Human Rights
Watch that insurgents held them at various bases in Donetsk, Sloviansk, and
Makyivka, including in security services (SBU) buildings, local
administration buildings, and other buildings. On August 17, Human Rights
Watch researchers witnessed a DPR representative at the Donetsk SBU building
read a list of 55 detainees to a large group of local residents who gathered
there hoping to find their missing relatives. Local people confirmed to Human
Rights Watch researchers that insurgents read out a list of civilian
detainees every evening. Human Rights Watch also examined
lists of captives maintained by Sloviansk insurgents, which human rights
lawyers found in the SBU building after Ukrainian forces took control of the
city. The lawyers matched some of the names on the list to people whose cases
Human Rights Watch documented. Human Rights Watch is also
concerned by evidence of extra-judicial executions, and other civilian deaths
in custody. For example, Human Rights Watch came into possession of three
death sentences against civilians apparently issued by the Sloviansk
insurgents’ summary war tribunal. Two were marked “executed.” Human Rights Watch has not
independently verified whether those named in the death sentences were in
fact executed, but in July the Internet news media site Buzzfeed and two
other foreign reporters found similar execution orders in Sloviansk and had
them “corroborated by
sources including a man who stood ‘trial.’”
One former captive interviewed by Human Rights Watch in August said he
witnessed the interrogation of a man whose dead body with marks of torture
was found several days later. Human Rights Watch could not
establish the exact number of civilian captives insurgents have held in
eastern Ukraine since April. A July 15 report by the Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights cited a Ukrainian Interior
Ministry figure of 717 people, including civilians and members of Ukrainian
forces, “abducted by armed groups in eastern Ukraine” between mid-April and
mid-July. At the end of August the Center
for Freeing Prisoners, a nongovernmental group run by former Ukrainian military
officers negotiating for release of hostages, published a list of 501 people whose release they are trying to secure. At least 129
were identified as civilians. A psychologist in Dniepropetrovsk
who worked with several people who had been tortured during rebel captivity
described them to Human Rights Watch as “distressed,” “deeply traumatized,”
and “extremely frightened.” One, he said, was covered with bruises from
severe beatings, “stared into space, would not talk or react to verbal
stimulation, and although he had no prior psychiatric condition, required
immediate psychiatric hospitalization.” A human rights lawyer in Kiev who
took on the cases of six former captives told Human Rights Watch that all of
her clients had been beaten in captivity and that some alleged they were
tortured with electric shocks, cut with knives, and burned with cigarettes. Common article 3 to the Geneva
Conventions and article 4.2 of Additional Protocol II, which govern non-international armed conflicts, ban taking hostages and abducting civilians. As a party to the
conflict rebels may detain enemy soldiers or persons on security grounds,
subject to due process. But Human Rights Watch found that rebel forces are
vastly exceeding this authority, essentially abducting civilians they
perceive as critics and using some as “bargaining chips,” as one of the
former leaders of the self-proclaimed DPR said publicly. Torture and cruel or degrading
treatment of people in custody is absolutely prohibited under international
human rights and humanitarian law, and states have an obligation to prosecute
those responsible. “Self-proclaimed
authorities in eastern Ukraineshould immediately free anyone held arbitrarily, put an end to
arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings, hostage-taking, and torture of
detainees, and treat anyone in custody – civilians and military alike –
humanely and with dignity,” Williamson said. “Russia should use its influence
with insurgent forces in eastern Ukraine to stop these blatant violations and
ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.” Ongoing Detentions Human Rights Watch documented
cases of an artist, a political activist, and a presumed critic of the
Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), who remain in captivity by insurgents in
Donetsk region. Serhiy Zakharov On August 6, 2014, insurgents
detained Serhiy Zakharov, 47, an artist from Donetsk. At this writing,
Zakharov remains in captivity in the SBU building as punishment for his
caricatures of insurgent leaders. In July Zakharov created an
anonymous art group, Murzilka, which published online and as part of public
installations in central Donetsk various caricatures of Igor Girkin, the
former DPR defense chief, and other DPR fighters. Zakharov’s brother, Andriy,
told Human Rights Watch that on August 6 a group of armed insurgents broke
into Zakharov’s house, searched the house and garage, put Zakharov and some
of his belongings into their vehicle, and drove off. Zakharov’s relatives
learned what happened from neighbors who witnessed the detention. Several
days later, DPR representatives confirmed to Zakharov’s family that they were
holding him in the SBU building and that an “investigation” into his
“unlawful actions” was under way. Andriy Zakharov told Human Rights
Watch: Murzilka became pretty popular on
Facebook, and journalists would reach out to Serhiy for interview requests…. He
actually gave an interview the day before the DPR came for him. On the
evening of August 6, [neighbors said] armed men arrived in a minibus and
surrounded his house, as if they were after a dangerous criminal…. The house
was totally torn apart as a result of their search. They took away Serhiy’s
computer and other electronics, all his drawings, and stuff. Though they did
not say how long they’d be holding him, what exactly they were accusing him
of, and what his punishment would be. On August 17 Zakharov was
temporarily released and DPR representatives told him to return to the SBU
building the next day to pick up his identification documents and other
belongings. The next day Zakharov went to a hospital for a medical
examination of his injuries from beatings in captivity, including x-rays that
revealed rib fractures, and then returned to the SBU building. A friend
watched him enter the building and waited outside for him until late evening.
The guards refused to answer his questions about Zakharov. Later that week,
Zakharov’s relatives received information from DPR representatives that he
was being held in the SBU building to serve “30 days’ detention as punishment
for his actions.” Dmytro Potekhin On August 7, DPR fighters in
Donetsk detained a prominent pro-Ukraine activist, Dmytro Potekhin, 37, who
had arrived the day before apparently to see how the city was affected by the
armed conflict. Family members said the DPR leadership has accused Potekhin
of spying and that he remains a hostage. The insurgents are apparently
negotiating with the Ukrainian authorities over his possible exchange for
captured rebels. Potekhin’s family learned of his
detention on August 12 when an unidentified person contacted them through
social media, claiming he had been held with Potekhin at the insurgent base
at the Izolyatsiya plant in Donetsk. The person told Potekhin’s relatives
that the insurgents accused Potekhin of being a spy but did not beat him. During the next two weeks, several
other sources told Potekhin’s family that he was at the Izolyatsiya plant,
that his captors did not torture him, and that negotiations regarding his
exchange were under way. On August 25 Potekhin’s parents
told Human Rights Watch that they thought they recognized him among the
Ukrainian prisoners paraded by insurgents in the center of Donetsk on August 24. Mykola Mykolaiv (not his real
name) On August 16, insurgents in
Donetsk detained Mykola Mykolaiv, 54. On August 17 his wife, Anna (not her real name), received confirmation that he was held in the SBU
building but could not get any information about the reason for his
detention. Anna told Human Rights Watch that
when she returned to their apartment late in the evening of August 16, it was
“literally turned upside down” and that her husband was gone. Next-door
neighbors told her that earlier that evening several armed men entered the
apartment, searched it, forced Mykolaiv into their vehicle along with some of
the family’s belongings, and drove off. When Anna examined the apartment she
realized that her husband’s documents, phone, laptop, and some cash were
missing. The next day, Anna heard her
husband’s name read among 54 other names on the SBU list of detainees. The
DPR representative who read the list told Anna that he did not know what
Mykolaiv was accused of and how long he would be in detention. Anna said: He did not participate in any
rallies or anything. Maybe it’s because he said some critical things about
the DPR on his VKontakte [social network] account…. On the other hand, I’m
even more frightened they would accuse him of being a spy. He always rides his
bicycle to work and they [the DPR] think informers for Ukrainian forces do
this to take a close look at different sites. We have some unfriendly
neighbors who could have reported him to the DPR, simply out of spite…. [The
DPR] don’t answer my questions except by saying that they are still “working
on it.” Mykolaiv apparently remains at the
SBU. Taking Relatives of Presumed
Critics Hostage Activists from Donetsk and Luhansk
regions seeking release of captives told Human Rights Watch that in recent
months they had documented several cases in which insurgents captured or
threatened parents of pro-Ukrainian activists or journalists who had fled the
region for security reasons in order to force their children to return and
give themselves up. Human Rights Watch documented one such case in the
Donetsk region. Iryna and Valeriy Ischenko On August 9, 2014, armed men in
Donetsk raided the apartment of Iryna Ischenko and her husband, Valeriy,
forced the couple into a car, and drove away with them. They were held until
August 19, for the most part at the Izolyatsiya base in Donetsk, and then
released but without their identity documents. Insurgents appeared to have
targeted the couple because their daughter, Viktoria, who had left Donetsk
two months earlier, had worked for a Ukrainian-language media portal. Viktoria Ischenko told Human
Rights Watch that on August 9 her mother called her at 3:40 p.m. and said
that people claiming to be from the DPR had just knocked on their door,
demanding to talk about her. After her mother refused to let them in, they
left, threatening to return and break down the door. The daughter tried
unsuccessfully to reach her parents for several hours. Later that day, the
couple’s next- door neighbors described to Viktoria what had happened. She
said: The neighbors [told me they] heard
some noise, looked out, and saw that the door to my parents’ apartment was
open. They stepped inside and saw two men in civilian clothes and an armed
man in fatigues tearing the place apart. The men chased [the neighbors] away,
but my mother managed to say, “This is happening because my daughter is a
journalist.” The DPR people spent a total of four hours in the apartment. At
8 p.m., they [DPR representatives] led my parents down the stairs and carried
out their computer and some other devices. Viktoria worked at the
Ukrainian-language media portal Ngo.donetsk.ua, which stopped operating in
the summer of 2014. In 2013 she participated in a workshop on information
technology sponsored by the United States embassy in Ukraine. She said that
on the day her parents were detained, armed insurgents visited the parents of
another pro-Ukraine activist who had also left Donetsk several months
earlier. They threatened to hold the activist’s parents hostage until she
returned to Donetsk and gave herself up to the DPR. A man called the young
woman, claimed he was a DPR representative, and told her to return to Donetsk
if she wanted her parent to be safe. They have not been harmed. Torture of Activists Captured by
Insurgents Since April 2014 Human Rights
Watch has documented over two dozen of cases of insurgents torturing political activists
they detained in Donetsk, Sloviansk, Makyivka, and Luhansk. While in eastern
Ukraine in August, Human Rights Watch researchers documented several more. Dmytro Kluger, Viktor Levchuk, and
Olha Klimenko In mid-May insurgents detained
three pro-Ukraine activists in Donetsk, held them in captivity for six days,
tortured them, and used them for forced labor. Dmytro Kluger, 35, said that
police stopped his car on May 22 at about noon as he and fellow activists
Viktor Levchuk and Olha Klimenko were leaving Donetsk. Police called the DPR
authorities and a group of armed insurgents promptly arrived and took all
three to the SBU building in Donetsk. Armed men in fatigues searched all
three, put Kluger and Levchuk into a small basement cell together, and put
Klimenko into a separate cell. The captors pulled Kluger’s cap over his eyes
and wrapped tape around it. After an hour, men took Levchuk
away for questioning. Two hours later they took Kluger to the second floor. Kluger
was able to make out three interrogators wearing military fatigues. Two other
men stood behind him and delivered kicks and punches. He said another five
people were observing the proceedings: They [interrogators] asked me if I
was involved with Euromaidan. They also wanted to know if I worked for one of
the election commissions [for the May 25 Ukrainian presidential elections]. I
admitted to being on an election commission and they started screaming, “How
much do they pay you? What do you do for them?” Those who stood behind me
beat me for giving snide replies or thinking too much before answering their
questions. They punched me on the head, on the liver, in the solar plexus. One
of them put his gun to my head and pulled the trigger. The gun wasn’t loaded,
but I did not know that. The beating went on for some 40 minutes.... Then, a
guy with a cover name, Cherep [Skull], took me back to the basement and said
he’d tear my liver out if I didn’t get the chair of my election commission to
come to them…. Their interrogations were all about breaking you. Kluger said that the next day, the
guards gave him fatigues to wear instead of his bloodied clothes and took him
to the SBU yard where he saw another eight detainees, including Ruslan
Kudryavtsev, an election commission chair
from Donetsk. The insurgents split the prisoners into two groups. They
dispatched the first group to fill bags with sand at checkpoints and tasked
the second one with stripping the plastic covering off copper wire. Kluger
was in the second group. He said that while the detainees worked, crouched
over the rolls of wiring, the guards kept kicking and punching them on the
back, arms, and legs, yelling that they were too slow, that they were
“killers deployed by the Kiev junta.” In the evening, the guards took Kluger
back to the basement, kicking him and saying that he had two hours to sleep
before his next interrogation. That evening Kluger tried
unsuccessfully to slit his wrist using a key he had managed to hide from his
captors. Later that evening he tried to strangle himself with his shoelace. He
fainted and came to a while later, after his captors had poured water over
him. The next day, insurgents took him
and Levchuk, who had suffered a dislocated shoulder during his interrogation
the night before, to an emergency room in Donetsk. Both were covered in
bruises. A doctor treated Levchuk’s shoulder, diagnosed Kluger with a
concussion, and urged the insurgents to leave them both in the hospital. The
insurgents said they would “provide the necessary treatment” themselves and
took the men back to the SBU. For the next three days, the insurgents left
Kluger to recover in his cell. On May 26, insurgents forced
Kluger to come out and work again. The following evening, guards took Kluger
into a room where an insurgent commander with the code name Kerch, who said
he was a native of Crimea, was already talking to Levchuk, Klimenko, and
Kudryavtsev. Kerch said they were free to go, indicating they had been
“exchanged” for captured insurgents, apparently along with several captured
members of the Ukrainian forces. All three were released immediately. On May 30 Kluger filed a complaint
with the Ukrainian security services in Kiev for the purposes of future
prosecution of those responsible for torturing him and had a medical
examination that revealed a basal skull fracture, a perforated eardrum, an
acute ear infection, and multiple hematomas. Yevheniya Zakrevskaya, Levchuk’s
lawyer, told Human Rights Watch that in addition to a dislocated shoulder,
Levchuk suffered head traumas, multiple bruises on his face and neck, facial
skin damage, and a cigarette burn on his hand. Kluger said that insurgents
beat Klimenko less severely than the men but nonetheless repeatedly hit her
on the head and slapped her so hard during one interrogation that she fell
off the chair onto the concrete floor and suffered multiple bruises. Anna Guz and Fedir Menshakov At the end of May insurgents
detained pro-Ukraine activists Anna Guz, 30, and her partner, Fedir
Menshakov, 28, and held them hostage for five days at a police building in
Makyivka, in Donetsk region. Both were tortured and released in a prisoner
exchange with Ukrainian government authorities. Guz told Human Rights Watch that
at about 8 a.m. on May 27, she and Menshakov were awakened by loud knocks on
their apartment door in Donetsk and men yelling that they were from the DPR. When
Guz opened the door, she saw seven armed men in military fatigues. They said
that Guz and Menshakov were under arrest, threatened them with Kalashnikov
assault rifles, searched the apartment, and took their laptop, camera, cell
phones, credit cards, and pro-Ukraine leaflets. They also tore a Ukrainian
flag off the wall yelling, “You know that Ukrainian flags have been banned on
DPR territory after May 11 [the DPR referendum]!” They then tied the flag
around Guz’s head, covering her eyes, blindfolded Menshakov, marched both
activists down the stairs, pushed them into a vehicle, and drove off. When the car stopped, the armed
men led them into a damp basement. After a short while, they took Guz to
another room, sat her down on a box, and untied the blindfold. Guz saw two
women and two men, all in military fatigues. Another camouflage-clad man with
a knife ran into the room and threw himself at Guz screaming, “I’ll kill you,
I’ll cut you to pieces! You’ll eat that Ukrainian flag of yours!” He slapped
her hard on the face, causing her to bleed. For the next two hours, the man tortured
Guz, beating her, poking her with his knife, piercing her skin, and cutting
her face, hands, arms, and neck: He was yelling non-stop and waving
his knife close to my face…. He was hitting me on the knees with handcuffs,
then poked me with his knife on one knee, pushed the knife in by half an
inch, and turned it. He did the same to my other knee. He would run out and
then come back and torture me again. He threatened me with gang rape. The
whole thing continued for some two hours and the other four were just
watching, like in a theater…. Finally, he says, “Bow your head. It’s time to kill you!” and slashed
me on the back of my neck. So, my neck is bleeding, my hands and arms are all
cut up and bleeding – the lacerations are deep – and he drags me to another
room on the first floor with some armed people in it. Those people actually
asked me questions – in which events I took part, what kind of activism I was
involved in. They said that if I wanted to live I had to trick other
activists and journalists into coming to them. Because Guz was bleeding heavily,
the guards asked a nurse on the premises to clean and dress her lacerations. She
also secretly gave Guz a shot of anesthetic. Her captors then forced her to
wash the floors in the hall, even though her hands were still bleeding
through the dressings, and then to clean the inside of a car in which bodies
of killed insurgents had been brought to the base. When Guz was washing the
car, she told Human Rights Watch, the base commander arrived and, indicating
Guz’s condition, berated the insurgents. “Why did you do this? Are you nuts? She
is up for exchange – what would they think about our treatment of
prisoners?!” The next day, her torturer took her to a hospital to treat her
right index finger, which was injured and would not stop bleeding. While
leaving the yard, Guz saw a sign on the gate that read, “Makyivka Police
Organized Crime Department.” At Makyivka’s central hospital, a
doctor treated her wounds and gave her a large dose of antibiotics. Guz spent
the rest of her captivity in a room with her partner, who was also badly
beaten. On the sixth day, they, along with one other captive, were exchanged
for three captured insurgents held by Ukraine government forces and set free. Two-and-a-half months after Guz’s
release, the scars on her hands and arms were still plainly visible. She and
Menshakov both lodged complaints with the Ukrainian security services for the
purposes of future prosecution of those responsible. Detentions and Cruel and Degrading
Treatment of Journalists Since April 2014, numerous
journalists, both Ukrainian and foreign, have experienced physical violence,
detention, harassment, intimidation, and death threats from insurgent forces,
according to media reports and information Human Rights Watch collected from
the journalists, including 12 cases based on first-hand interviews. In some
cases the violence against journalists has amounted to what appears to be
cruel and degrading treatment. Three of these cases are described below. Serhiy Lefter In mid-April, insurgent forces who
controlled Sloviansk held Serhiy Lefter, a 24-year-old Ukrainian freelance
journalist, captive for 17 days, beating and threatening him repeatedly. At about 7 p.m. on April 15,
Lefter, on assignment in the center of Sloviansk, was talking on his cell
phone when two men approached, one masked and both armed with guns, and asked
why Lefter was talking on the phone. When Lefter responded that he was a
journalist, the men took him to the city council building, where several insurgents
interrogated him, searched his backpack, and demanded his laptop password. They
accused him of being a spy, of gathering data about firing positions, and of
involvement with the far-right Ukrainian nationalist group, Right Sector. One
of the men in charge told Lefter they would take him hostage. Lefter spent the night there. The
next day, Vyacheslav Ponomarev, then the self-proclaimed people’s mayor of
Sloviansk, ordered him to be taken to the SBU building. When Ponomarev
himself arrived at the SBU, he accused Lefter of being a spy and punched him
in the jaw. Lefter said that on his third or
fourth day in captivity, the insurgents interrogated him from about 11 p.m.
to 3 or 4 a.m. Judging from other voices he could hear, he estimated that
four to five other people were being questioned in the same room. When Lefter
told the insurgents that he was a journalist, a man hit him on the right side
of his face several times, dislodging his lower left front tooth and causing
hematomas and massive swelling. Someone pushed Lefter to the floor and kicked
him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. The interrogators dragged Lefter
across the floor and at one point burned his right hand with a cigarette. Human
Rights Watch, interviewing him four months later, photographed a small,
circular scar from the burn. Lefter said that those questioned in the same
room included Yuri Popravka, whose body with marks of torture was found in
Sloviansk on April 19, together with the body of
Vladimir Rybak, a pro-Kiev politician. He
said that during his interrogation, he could hear the other captives
screaming: They would beat information out of
them to get answers to how did they get here and which checkpoints did they
come through. I could hear kicking and punching. I heard a few people being
burned with cigarettes. I also heard them threaten to cut off sex organs. I
could hear them taking someone’s pants down. They threatened me with it too. One
of the prisoners seemed to be totally covered in tape, and it seemed that
when they cut the tape they were cutting the detainee, because I heard him
scream. On April 26 or 27 the guards found
out that one of the detainees had managed to sneak out a letter. They
questioned Lefter and his cellmates, Artem Deinega and Vitaliy Kovalchuk, all
night and beat Lefter on the legs with a truncheon. On May 2 at about 1 p.m.,
the insurgents told Lefter he was free and released him. Simon Ostrovsky, VICE On April 21, armed insurgents
captured a VICE News reporter,Simon Ostrovsky, in Sloviansk and held him for
three days, beating him repeatedly. Ostrovsky told Human Rights Watch that
this was related to his documentary series, Russian Roulette, in Ukraine and the “inconvenient questions” he kept asking at news
conferences of the self-proclaimed authorities in Sloviansk. Ostrovsky and four other
journalists were stopped in their car on April 21 at an insurgent checkpoint
close to their hotel in Sloviansk. An insurgent shined a flashlight in
Ostrovsky’s face, compared it to a photograph, and yelled, “I got him, I got
him, it’s him!” Armed men pulled the journalists
from the car and searched, threatened, and questioned them about their work. They
let the other four go but took Ostrovsky to the Sloviansk SBU building. A
group of men in military fatigues led him to a courtyard behind the building,
blindfolded him, searched him once again, took away all of his belongings,
and tied his hands behind his back. Then they led him down to the basement
and threw him on the floor. A group of men came into the room
and beat him, kicking and punching him in the ribs and smacking him on the
head and ears. The beating continued intermittently from approximately 1:30
a.m. until daylight, he said. When he was not being beaten he was left
blindfolded, sitting in the corner of a filthy basement room with damp walls
and water dripping from the ceiling. The next day, the insurgents put
other detainees in the same room, at one point there were as many as eight. Among
them were a Ukrainian journalist and his driver, a member of the local
legislature, a local resident captured for attempting to set up a web camera
across the street from the SBU building, and a Euromaidan activist whom
insurgents accused of being associated with the Right Sector and who suffered
a very bad beating in captivity. Some had already spent more than two weeks
in captivity and based on their own experiences, warned Ostrovsky that he
should expect a “real” interrogation during which he would probably be
severely beaten. At one point, a man took
Ostrovsky, blindfolded, to another room. Several men asked him for his
computer password, beat him on the arm with a truncheon when he refused to
provide it, and asked whether he worked for the CIA, the FBI, or the Kiev
government, and whether he was a spy for the Right Sector. This interrogation
continued for about ten minutes, after which the men left Ostrovsky alone in
the room for the night. Ostrovsky’s hands were bound for
his first two days in captivity; the beatings stopped after a day and a half. He said his first night in
captivity was the roughest: It is an initiation procedure
which involves violence. That first night they want to terrify you so that
you are cooperative. They want to make sure you sit when they tell you, look
down on the floor, do everything they tell you to do. They want to break your
resolve to resist, to punish you, to teach you a lesson. Throughout Ostrovsky’s captivity,
DPR representatives made contradictory statements to the press regarding
Ostrovsky’s fate and whereabouts. At about 5 p.m. an insurgent gave Ostrovsky
his belongings and told him that he was free to go. Pavel Kanygin, Novaya Gazeta Pavel Kanygin, special
correspondentfor the Russian independent outlet Novaya Gazeta spent around 12 hours in insurgent
captivity from May 11 to 12 in Donetsk region. He was reporting on the May 11
unofficial referendum on the independence ofthe self-proclaimed Donetsk
People’s Republic. Before his abduction, Kanygin published a series of
comments on social media describing, among other things, the persecution of
officials who did not support the referendum. Kanygin said he was in a café in
Artyomovsk with Stefan Scholl, a correspondent for the German newspaper Südwest Presse, when four
men approached them at about 9 p.m., demanding that Kanygin explain his
coverage of the referendum. They took both men to the town’s main square,
where a mob of armed insurgents and local residents had already gathered. Armed
insurgents surrounded Kanygin, accusing him of being a spy and demanding that
he disclose his ties to the Right Sector, the SBU, or the CIA. When Scholl
tried to intervene, they threatened to shoot him on the spot. Unarmed people pushed Kanygin to
the ground and started kicking and punching him, but an armed insurgent
ordered them to stop, saying they would take Kanygin to Sloviansk to “figure
things out in the SBU basement.” The man, whom people called “Bashnya”
(Tower) or “Leonidych” (apparently, his patronymic), twisted Kanygin’s arms,
pushed him into a car, and told him to sit still and keep his head on his
knees. When Kanygin asked the man what they wanted, “Bashnya” elbowed him in
the jaw, breaking a tooth. On the way, “Bashnya” and the driver discussed
where to take Kanygin, contemplating whether to exchange him “for some of our
boys” or to kill him in the woods. Eventually they brought Kanygin to
an insurgent base in Volodarka, near Sloviansk. Several armed men led Kanygin
into a tent, took his laptop and his backpack, and ordered him to strip. The
insurgents asked Kanygin for the passwords to his cellphone and laptop and
hit him in the face when he refused. When one of the armed men grabbed
Kanygin and threatened to break his finger, the journalist gave his password.
The insurgents logged in and went through Kanygin’s files and photographs,
asking him questions. Kanygin told Human Rights Watch he
heard insurgents bragging on the phone about “catching a good target for
exchange” and getting instructions. Then they threw him on the floor of a
vehicle and drove to another camp with insurgents from Horlivka. This group
was under orders to transfer Kanygin to Sloviansk. However, they eventually
took all the cash Kanygin had, 39,000 rubles (US$1,130) and allowed him to
call Scholl, who offered to give all the cash he could pull together, nearly
$1,000. They told Kanygin the money was “not ransom but your contribution to
our war.” Scholl told Human Rights Watch
that at 2 a.m. he received a call from Kanygin asking him to pay the
insurgents for his release. Kanygin’s captors met with Scholl at his hotel in
Artyomovsk and took the cash from him. Scholl expected Kanygin to be handed
over right away, but instead the insurgents drove Kanygin to Horlivka,
switched cars, apparently drugged him, and finally took him to Hotel Liverpul
in Donetsk. Kanygin told Human Rights Watch: I actually don’t remember what
happened after Horlivka. They made me drink some mineral water … and 15
minutes later I just nodded off in the car. When I came to I was on a bed in
a hotel room, fully dressed, and a clerk was shaking me awake saying it was
already noon. He said two men brought me into the hotel lobby in the early
morning and asked for a room. He said I was walking between them as they held
on to me and looked a bit strange…. It was more like a coma than normal
sleep. I suspect they put something in that water. I called my editor. It’s clear that I was released so soon only
because Scholl had gotten in touch with my colleagues, and then some
high-level Russian officials intervened on my behalf. The Horlivka men
decided to make some fast money and simply took whatever cash [we] had. A few
hours after I came to, a DPR rep … called me to apologize for the
“misunderstanding” … and promised that my computer, phone, and money would be
returned to me. But this never happened. Detention and Torture of Religious
Activists Armed insurgents have also
captured, held, and tortured active members of non-Russian Orthodox religious
groups. In its July 15, 2014 report on the
human rights situation in Ukraine,
the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that “a Protestant
pastor and his wife were abducted and held in Druzhkivka (Donetsk region)” by
insurgent forces. Also in July Anton Heraschenko, an
advisor to Ukraine’s interior minister, stated that a mass gravefound in Sloviansk contained the bodies of four members of the Church
of the Transfiguration: Albert and Ruvim Pavenko (sons of the church’s
pastor), as well as two deacons, Viktor Brodarsky and Volodymyr Velichko. On
July 8, insurgents had broken into the church during services and abducted
the four. Serhiy Kosyak Human Rights Watch spoke with an
evangelical pastor from Donetsk, Serhiy Kosyak, who described how insurgent
forces had detained and tortured him and other religious activists. Beginning in March Kosyak
coordinated daily ecumenical “prayer marathons for peace and unity” in the
center of Donetsk. He said that from April through August, insurgents had
taken 12 of the participants captive, held them at bases in Donetsk,
Makyivka, and other towns for periods ranging from several hours to several
weeks, beat and threatened them, and subjected at least three to mock
executions. At least four were released for ransom and one remains
disappeared. The others, to the best of Kosyak’s knowledge, were freed
without payment. Kosyak had spoken directly with all of those freed following
their release. Insurgents seized Kosyak himself
on May 24. That day, when Kosyak went to the “prayer marathon,” he saw that
the prayer tent had been destroyed and went to the city administration
building to consult with acquaintances in the DPR about it. Another DPR
representative jumped on him, yelling to others, “This man is a troublemaker!
He says that DPR is sinful, that God disapproves of separatism! He’s with
Right Sector!” Several people then severely beat Kosyak, eventually throwing
him into a room on the eighth or the ninth floor and threatening to take him
to the SBU basement in Sloviansk. A short time later, two former members of
Kosyak’s church entered the room, said he was “harmless,” and convinced the
others to let him go. Kosyak said: I spent four hours there. They
beat me with truncheons and hammers. I had a split lip, and my left arm was
fractured. My left side was all back and blue. On August 17, when Kosyak was
away, armed DPR representatives forced their way into Kosyak’s home in
Donetsk looking for him. They searched the house thoroughly, found nothing
except family belongings and religious literature, and left. Kosyak also told Human Rights
Watch that insurgents on August 3 had abducted another of his
congregationists, Yevheniy Frantsuk, held him in a trench for three weeks,
and released him on August 23. Kosyak said Frantsuk had not been tortured. Alexander Khomchenko Kosyak also gave a detailed
account of how armed insurgents detained and tortured Alexander Khomchenko, a
member of his church and deputy coordinator of the “prayer marathon,” and
detained two participants, Valeriy Yakubenko and Roksolana Shvaika. On August 8 Khomchenko was
coordinating the daily prayer session while Kosyak was away. The session
began at 6 p.m. in the city center, as usual. Several armed insurgents
approached the group at about 6:30 p.m., said they were from the DPR, and
asked who was in charge. Khomchenko said he was, and the insurgents detained
him, Yakubenko, and Shvaika and took them to the SBU building. There, it
appeared that the insurgents mistook Khomchenko for Kosyak. When bringing in
the three detainees one of the captors yelled to the insurgents in the
building, “We got Kosyak!” The insurgents interrogated their
captives for three hours at the SBU, together and separately. They soon
released Shvaika, berating her for getting involved with a “sect,” and
transferred the two men to an insurgent base at the conscription office in
Makyivka. The insurgents released Yakubenko the next day. They held and tortured Khomchenko
for three days, then released him. Khomchenko had volunteered as a driver to
evacuate people from areas affected by the armed conflict, and when he was
detained he had several receipts from gas stations across Donetsk region. The
receipts made the insurgents suspect he was a spy for the Ukrainian forces. Kosyak
said: They started beating Sasha [short
for Alexander] in Makyivka…. Sasha told me they also would watch while they
would force some prisoners to beat other prisoners. If they thought the kicks
and punches weren’t strong enough they would then beat the slackers. Sasha’s
body was all black and blue, and his face was beaten to pulp. During his
three days in Makiyvka they staged his execution three times. Twice they shot
above his head. And the third time, they shot at him at point-blank range,
but the gun was not loaded. He is now recovering from his injuries. Human Rights Watch examined a
photograph of Khomchenko taken two weeks after his release from captivity. His
entire upper body was still extensively bruised. After the detention of Khomchenko,
Yakubenko, and Shvaika, the prayer marathon participants stopped conducting
public sessions, convening them instead in secret places. http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/28/ukraine-rebel-forces-detain-torture-civilians This text is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 United States (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 US) license. Ukraine: Rebels Subject Civilians to Forced
Labour, Sept. 5, 2014. Human Rights Watch ‘Punishment
Brigades’ Put in Danger, Abused (Berlin) – Insurgent forces are detaining civilians on allegations of
violating public order and then subjecting them to forced labor. Rebels
appear to be using public order infractions as a pretext to obtain unpaid
labor. They [armed insurgents] picked me up drunk, late at night. They beat
me up, took me to the [Donetsk region] administration building, beat me up
some more. In the end, they put me on this brigade with a dozen others. We
were doing different things – filling bags with sand, clearing brush, peeling
vegetables, cleaning some premises. Helping at checkpoints was real scary because
of the shelling nearby. In mid-July,
armed insurgents caught Yuri (not his real name), a 28-year-old student, in
the street with an open can of beer. Yuri told Human Rights Watch he spent
the next six days working in a small “punishment brigade” at a checkpoint in
the village of Pervomaiskoe, southwest of Donetsk and 10 kilometers from
Karlovka, which at the time was on the front line between government and
insurgent forces: The checkpoint came under shelling twice while I was there. When the
shelling started, the fighters told us where to run, where to hide, and how
to protect ourselves from the shelling. There was a doctor there as well. I
think they just needed the workers. Two other detainees were brought there
two days after I arrived [for] drinking beer after curfew. They had several
bruises. They told me that they had been beaten [at the rebel headquarters]
to confess that they were drug addicts.… I was lucky they did not beat me.… But
it is dangerous work. You could get killed if the checkpoint comes under
attack.… International
humanitarian law does permit parties to the conflict, in limited
circumstances, to impose some compulsory labor on civilians. However, it
cannot be abusive and should be compensated, nor can the work relate directly
to the conduct of military operations. This applies whether the civilians are
in detention or not. http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/04/ukraine-rebels-subject-civilians-forced-labor This text is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 United States (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 US) license. |