State of human rights in Ukraine has significantly deteriorated in 2016 – report of human rights defenders

The state of human rights in Ukraine has significantly deteriorated in 2016. In particular, there were cases of significant violation of freedom of speech, as well as a significant increase in poverty and social inequality, including gross violations of the right to asylum by the Security Service of Ukraine.

As stated in the report titled “Human Rights – 2016”, which was presented by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) in cooperation with Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHRPG) on May 19.

The report consists of 33 thematic sections, prepared by representatives of various human rights organizations, government agencies and higher educational institutions, including UHHRU, KHRPG, NGO Institute for Religious Freedom, NGO Institute of Legal Research and Strategies, the Coalition Rights of the Child in Ukraine, the Civil Network OPORA, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and others.

“Most complaints are complaints of torture by law enforcement, namely the Security Service of Ukraine”, – said Yevhen Zakharov, Director of the KHRPG, during the presentation.

He also described the extremely difficult human rights situation on the occupied territories, in the “grey” zone and the problems with the exchange of captives.

Speaking about the reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Yevhen Zakharov stressed that it is much more difficult to carry out reform at this point in time than two or three years ago, since “the system has recovered”. He also spoke about mass layoffs at the National Police due to low salaries, which resulted in a lack of human resources in autumn 2016, and, in turn, this contributed to the growth of crime.]

Lawyer of the UHHRU Daria Svyrydova, talking about the human rights situation in Crimea, said that the main violators of human rights in the occupied peninsula are both the Russian Federation, state-invader, and Ukraine.

As for the actions of the occupation regime, first of all, this refers to the forced resettlement of inhabitants from the peninsula to the other regions of Russia, which is a war crime. This is especially true for people, who are currently in places of detention.

According to Daria Svyrydova, the freedom of speech in Crimea is almost destroyed. This is indicated by notable cases against journalists, for example the case against RL journalist Mykola Semena, who is on trial because of his views in his professional activities. The human rights defender said that nowadays not only the opposition media or activists are persecuted but also those loyal to the occupation regime journalists who attempted to conduct investigations related to corruption. The ban of the Mejlis also leads to constant persecution of the Crimean Tatars by the occupying authorities.

Also in 2016, there was a tendency to arrest so-called “saboteurs” and “spies” among the population of the peninsula, and among Ukrainian citizens, who came to Crimea.

Daria Svyrydova stressed the violations of religious freedom. Primarily regarding Muslims from the Crimean Tatar community, as well as parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC), most religious buildings of which were transferred to the property of the Russian Orthodox Church. Today the UOC (KP) owns only one temple in Simferopol.

Human rights defender also drew attention to the non-recognition of documents in Ukraine, issued to Ukrainian citizens in occupied Crimea. Under international humanitarian law, Ukraine can recognize the information specified in those documents (namely the acts of birth and death registration, because Russia is recognized as the invader state, and it has the duty to issue documents to citizens on the territory de facto controlled by it).

According to the human rights defender, specific problems of Crimean IDPs are particular unregulated commitments, when registering retirement benefit, to prove that they do not receive it from the Russian Federation. Daria Svyrydova also drew attention to the discriminative statement by the President on obtaining biometric passports to citizens living on the occupied territories.

Maksym Shcherbatiuk, Program Director of the UHHRU, described the main trends of the property rights and socio-economic rights last year. He noted that overall the situation with property rights has deteriorated in 2016.

According to Shcherbatiuk, this was also highlighted by international organizations, in particular, the Property Rights Alliance and Ukraine is ranked among the last in the ratings of the organization. One of the key issues is a terrible state of implementation of court decisions for the property protection. Currently we can talk about tens of billions of hryvnia debt in this regard. He also noted the passiveness of the state to unlock the moratorium on land transfer.

Maksym Shcherbatiuk also noted that in his view, the situation in the field of socio-economic rights is close to catastrophic. He mentioned the high level of poverty and huge increasing gap between the income levels.

“Before, to a greater extent, this was not related to the government agencies, but now the situation has changed and it also includes government agencies. This gap is enormous”, – said the Program Director of the UHHRU.