Ukrainian Security Service’s proceeding against Lviv anarchist is repressive measure – human rights activist

April 27, the Security Service of Ukraine searched the apartment of 19-year-old Oleh Kordiyak, the activist of the Black Dawn anarchist organization.

“About 11:00, five Security Service officers burst into my apartment and gave me a search warrant. One officer examined my computer while another one examined the clothes and boxes. They seized postcards. Rather, I showed the postcards to them as I did not consider them to be something illegal. I had the postcards in my backpack, as well as glue for wallpaper, solvent, brush for sticking leaflets. They also seized my phone, computer system unit, two flash drives, tourist knife,” Oleh Kordiyak said to Ukrainian Hromadske Radio.

The Ukrainian Security Service launched the criminal proceeding under Article 109 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Actions aimed at forceful change or overthrow of the constitutional order or take-over of government) and Part 2, Article 258-3 of the Criminal Code (Participation in a terrorist organization).

The Security Service accuses the organization of “preparing a provocative May 1 march.”

“The purpose of the action was to destabilize the situation in the region… The wrongdoers prepared and spread the materials that popularized the totalitarian regime using the communist symbols. During searches, the computer equipment and materials with evidence of anti-Ukrainian activities were seized,” the Security Service’s report reads.

Oleh Kordiyak claims that he has not heard about the “Lviv anti-fascist resistance” and suggests that the Ukrainian Security Service deliberately invented this organization. He also believes that the proceeding was launched to discredit the Black Dawn movement and him personally.

Human rights activist Maksym Butkevych, the co-coordinator of the Without Borders project at the Social Action Centre, indicates that the leaflets contained the usual radical left slogans.

“It is not clear why the proceeding was qualified under those articles. The leaflets contained rather familiar left-radical (in terms of political ideology, not pro-Soviet) slogans about the inadmissibility of exploitation of workers, the impossibility of situation when the assets of 20 oligarchs equal the country’s budget – I quote one of the postcards – and other things that are self-evident. It is not clear why such serious articles appeared in this case,” the human rights activist said.

“Judging from the information, which was made public by the Security Service so far, we can make a conclusion that the repressive measures were taken against the person because of his views and the intention to express them,” he added.

Maksym Butkevych believes that a similar incident happened under presidency of Leonid Kuchma in 1997. Then, the Direct Action student trade union took part in demonstrations of various political forces, which primarily required paying the salaries to state employees.

“Outlining the Security Service’s message in simple terms, all the people having the anarchist beliefs are criminals. Anyone who considers the exploitation of a person by a person (and not only economical) to be a shameful phenomenon which should disappear; considers the gap between the rich and the poor to be unacceptable; considers the modern state as a machine that tends to monopoly on coercion as such that is run by the rich not the poor; considers justice and solidarity as the key values ​​- all of them can be charged under the Article 109 of the Criminal Code, not only Oleh Kordiyak, whose apartment was searched, but other advocates of opinions identified as ‘anarchist’ as well,” Maksym Butkevych said.