Facade of new police conceals old problems – expert

Three military units, which should be transferred to the Defense Ministry, are now subordinated to the Interior Ministry. The reform of the Interior Ministry as the civil service will be completed only after this transfer is carried out.

This was stated by Oleh Martynenko, human rights activist and expert on the Interior Ministry reform, the Human Rights Information Centre correspondent reports.

Martynenko noted, “We will have two centers of reform. The first is Eka Zguladze, who deals with the patrol police. The second center is the so-called ‘Lviv experiment’ providing for restructuring of the work of the department itself in town of Sambir, Lviv region.”

According to Oleh Martynenko, the Georgian reformers actually brought the Soviet model of updating or cleansing of the police personnel. According to him, the new patrol police, involving highly motivated people with no criminal record, are the face of reform. However, the old problems of the police remain.

“The same old police dispatch center, old investigation, the same old operational officer stands behind these new nice guys. Even if the patrol police work well and take a hooligan politely to the department, the old duty officer will either take bribe and let the hooligan go, or will simply let him go because he won’t work in the police tomorrow and he does not care,” Oleh Martynenko said.

Among the issues to be addressed is the lack of institutional reform of education and demilitarization, including that of the new police. After all, special battalions of patrol police operate in the conflict zone, bearing not only small but also more serious arms.

“This allows saying that the police battalions are combatants from the point of view of the international law,” the expert said.

According to the international rules, only the so-called “military police” is allowed to take part in hostilities, but Ukraine has no such division.

Oleh Martynenko also noted that actually three separate armed units are subordinated to the Interior Minister and not controlled by the Defense Ministry – the National Guard, thirty already mentioned “police battalions” and the Border Guard Service. The expert believes that the reform of the Interior Ministry as the civil service will be completed only after these units are transferred to the Defense Ministry.

According to the human rights activist, only one part of the police has already announced its intention to be reformed unlike other institutions, “We have not heard about the project of reform of the migration service, emergency service, the reform of the Border Service, the National Guard.”