Iryna Gerashchenko: Donbas militants ‘torture children with public video recorded interrogations’

First Vice Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Ukraine’s representative in the humanitarian subgroup in the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk Iryna Gerashchenko sent a letter to the OSCE and UNICEF with a request to urgently check the information claiming that militants detained a group of teenagers, accused them of sabotage, and forced to confess to this crime while recording a video.

She wrote this on her Facebook page.

“The media recently covered shocking information that monsters in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions detained a group of teenagers for alleged ‘sabotage’ and tortured them… This information, obviously, needs to be checked and I think it is a good opportunity for UNICEF to verify this information, gain access to unfortunate children who are tortured with public video recorded interrogations. What we see on the video is the Stalin era, Stalinist methods that are successfully used by Russian Federal Security Service and their satellites in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions… The video was posted on the Internet. Obviously, this information needs to be verified and responded to,” Gerashchenko wrote.

She is going to raise the issue during the talks in Minsk on September 21.

Gerashchenko also recalled that at the last meetings of the humanitarian subgroup the militants demanded that the Ukrainian side should return to the occupied Ukrainian territory in Donbas the orphans, who had been evacuated from the conflict zone by Ukrainian authorities and volunteers in the summer of 2014.

Ukrainian side firmly defends and will defend the rights of children, according to the Ukrainian legislation and all international conventions on protection of the rights of children, ratified by Ukraine, she noted.

In addition, according to her, the Russian Federation do not respond to any requests about information and fate of transferred to the Russian Federation Ukrainian children, family type homes and paramilitary camps, where teenagers from the occupied territories are inflated with hatred.

Gerashchenko calls on UNICEF to join the settlement of problems of children in the conflict zone, to obtain a permit to monitor the situation of children’s rights in the occupied territories and in Russia, where the work of this organization is actually blocked now. UNICEF should also help Ukraine search for Ukrainian orphans and those children who do not have parental care and who were illegally transferred to Russia, and to jointly resist any attempt to involve children in the conflict, First Vice Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine notes.