Medium-security ward for pro-Ukrainian views: Convicts ask to return them to Ukraine

Ukrainian citizens, serving sentences at the Penal Colony No. 9 in Shakhty town, Rostov region, Russian Federation, are under pressure from administration because of their pro-Ukrainian views.

They are also disappointed by inactivity of Ukrainian President and Justice Ministry, because nothing has been done to return them to Ukraine.

This was stated in the open letter from one of the convicts, Evhen Davydov, to Petro Poroshenko, available to the Human Rights Information Centre.

At the time of occupation of Crimea, Davydov was in the remand prison by the decision of Ukrainian court. He renounced Russian citizenship and refused to re-qualify his case in accordance with the Russian legislation.

In the court, the man announced about his denial to be prosecuted under Russian law, but he was sentenced and sent to prison in Rostov region.

He has already applied to consul with the request to visit him in the penal colony in Shakhty, but consul didn’t manage to come in two months, and he was put in the medium-security ward.

“I was put in the medium-security ward because I have demanded to be transferred to the territory of Ukraine,” Davydov said.

“Russia has deprived us of the opportunity to meet with relatives… Russia is a hard-to-get-place now for Ukrainians, like a far-away New Zealand. The price policy is completely different. Neither salary, nor pension would be enough to come and visit a convict,” he wrote in the open letter.

Evhen Davydov said that Ukrainian authorities had done nothing in order to return its citizens to the territory of Ukraine for over two years. The convict is planning to go on hunger strike if Ukrainian authorities continue to ignore his demands.

According to human rights activists, there are more than 1,000 convicts, who like Davydov, were sent from Crimea to Russian prisons. There are at least 240 women among them.

In terms of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the forced displacement of people from the occupied territory by the occupying state is considered to be a serious violation of international humanitarian law and a war crime.

Despite the problems with the extradition of Ukrainian convicts from the Russian side, the human rights activists believe that Ukraine also does not have strong political will and sense of responsibility for its citizens.

Thus, the expert of the Regional Human Rights Centre Roman Martynovsky claims that the Ukrainian consulate in the Russian Federation does not actively visit the convicts, who were transferred to the territory of Russia and are willing to serve their sentence on the territory of Ukraine, while remaining faithful to their citizenship.

“For the last two years, the inaction of the state towards the citizens of Ukraine, who were transferred to serve their sentence on the territory of the Russian Federation, is absolutely unjustified,” Roman Martynovsky said.