25.05.2011

Contradictory statements from Prosecutor about court order for Tymoshenko’s detention

Former Prime Minister, presidential candidate and leader of the Batkivshchyna Party, Yulia Tymoshenko spent 7 hours on Tuesday in the Prosecutor General’s Office and has been summoned again on Wednesday to read the file material.

23.05.2011

Silent Betrayal

50 years ago two Portuguese students raised their glasses in a toast to freedom. Hardly news, one would think, were it not for two details. One was that the two students paid for the toast with their freedom, both receiving 7 years imprisonment. The other that this case prompted one London lawyer,. Peter Benenson, to understand that helpless outrage was not enough. The rest, as they say, is history – the beginnings of Amnesty International.

23.05.2011

Ukrainian intellectuals call on Strasbourg to defend Yury Lutsenko

A number of prominent Ukrainian scholars, writers and academics have written a letter to the European Court of Human Rights asking the Court to give attention to the prosecution and continued remand in custody of former Minister of Internal Affairs and leader of the People’s Self-Defence Party, Yury Lutsenko.

10.05.2011

“The President is responsible for Lutsenko’s life”

The wife of former Minister of Internal Affairs in Tymoshenko’s government and leader of the political party People’s Self-Defence, Yury Lutsenko, has publicly warned that her husband’s state of health has deteriorated. Yury Lutsenko has been on hunger strike since 23 April in protest at the latest court order extending his remand in custody for another month. He has been held in the Kyiv SIZO [pre-trial detention centre] since December last year.

26.04.2011

Yury Lutsenko: Hunger strike is all that remains

Former Minister of Internal Affairs, Yury Lutsenko, declared a hunger strike on Friday in protest at his continued remand in custody. He said that he had no other means left of expressing his protest against the violation of his human rights but to declare a hunger strike. He spoke of this to journalists in the court hearing which again extended his remand in custody, this time until 26 May.

11.04.2011

Tax Code Protest prosecutions reminiscent of 1937 cases

In a recent interview, lawyer for the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Oleh Levytsky spoke of the case which has taken up most of his time over the last months. This is the prosecutions brought against alleged participants in the small business owners’ protest on Maidan Nezalezhnosti [Independence Square] in Kyiv against the Tax Code in November and early December last year, some concessions were made but then the protesters’ tent camp was forcibly dismantled almost the next day.

14.03.2011

Reprisals against the Tax Code Protesters

In an article for the authoritative newspaper Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, Roman Zinoviev asks whether one can believe the words of Ukraine’s Guarantor of the Constitution, the President, and answers that now the fourth President is confirming that a negative answer must be given. The entire country heard Yanukovych’s promise that there would be no persecution of the Tax Code Maidan (the mass protest on Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square. His word was not kept long: three weeks after the Tax Code Maidan the authorities began real political repression.

02.03.2011

Lawyer: the criminal proceedings against Tax Code protesters are political persecution

The lawyers defending those charged over the Tax Code Protest on Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square in Kyiv, and those accused, are determined to draw the public’s attention to the injustice of the situation. A press conference on Tuesday is entitled “Prisoners of the Tax Code Maidan – the repressive machine of the President’s Administration in action”.

18.02.2011

SBU: 5 Hour interrogation of historian Ruslan Zabily

According to the Liberation Movement Research Centre, on 16 February the SBU [Security Service] summoned historian and Director of the National Memorial Museum of Victims of the Occupation Regimes “Tyurma na Lonskoho” in Lviv, Ruslan Zabily for questioning.

13.01.2011

KHPG: On the arrest of a number of members of VO Tryzub

The Kharkiv Human Rights Group is disturbed by a number of arrests of the leaders and other members of the organization “Tryzub” named after Stepan Bandera in connection with a criminal case initiated by the Zaporizhya SBU [Security Service]. The criminal investigation is under Article 258 of the Criminal Code (act of terrorism) which is how the Zaporizhya Prosecutor and SBU have classified the explosion which destroyed the bust of Stalin in Zaporizhya on 31 December 2010.

15.12.2010

Berkut detained and searched another journalist on Monday

Chief Editor of the journal Korespondent, Vitaly Sych, reported on Tuesday 14 December that he had also been detained the day before by “Berkut” officers.

14.12.2010

Berkut detains Prominent Ukrainian Journalist with only a racist epithet as “grounds”

Mustafa Nayom, television presenter and journalist for the Ukrainska Pravda Internet publication is reported to have been detained by Berkut Special Force officers on Monday evening.

04.11.2010

Belarusian dissident Igor Koktysh once again arrested in Zhytomyr

Belarusian youth activist and rock musician, Igor Koktysh, who spent two and a half years in custody in Crimea because the Belarusian authorities were demanding his extradition, has again been arrested, this time with his wife and three friends.

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