Ukraine’s High Council of Justice not wants to listen to judges who report on pressure

The High Council of Justice of Ukraine does not want to identify the reasons for massive oath breaking by the judges during the Euromaidan protests.

Automaidan activist, lawyer Roman Maselko posted this on his Facebook page.

“At yesterday’s meeting, I called on the Council to finally answer the question – why did the judges break the oath so massively? Why did they reject all petitions? Why did they turn a blind eye to evidence of innocence and falsifications? Only the answers to these questions can help us find out what happened, why justice failed so, and what the oath breaking was exactly,” he wrote.

According to Roman Maselko, it is quite evident for the Maidan lawyers that the judges acted in accordance with strict orders.

“And we have the relevant proofs. In particular, judge of the Shevchenkivsky district court of Kyiv Iryna Makarenko gave evidence that former head of the court Olena Meleshak explained the need for exclusively maximum penalties for the Automaidan activists in form of  the driver’s license revocation,” the lawyer noted.

In addition, Roman Maselko points to the evidence, given by member of the High Council of Justice Iryna Mamontova on similar instructions from the Presidential Administration.

“So I filed a motion to the High Council of Justice with the request to exercise their rights and question at its meeting judges Meleshak, Makarenko, Mamontova, and collect other information which might indicate the reasons for such decisions. However, the High Council of Justice dismissed all my motions,” Roman Maselko wrote.

The lawyer stressed that the High Council of Justice was not ready to form the independent and highly professional judiciary able to administer justice professionally, conscientiously and impartially, pursuant to Article 1 of the Law of Ukraine “On the High Council of Justice.”

“It seems that the High Council of Justice aims to throw a bone to society by punishing dozen judges (common performers and victims of pressure), but to hide the main organizers of the actions. And the main thing is to keep the status quo to enable the authorities to continue influencing judges and getting the needed judgments not being punished for that,” noted the lawyer, adding that there were too many victims to maintain the status quo.

As a reminder, the Human Rights Information Center has recently reported that the judges began to report on the cases of pressure along with the lawyers and human rights activists. It turned out that the administration of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and the top leadership of the courts had tried to influence the judges to make them deliver the strictest judgments against the Automaidan activists.