25.05.2011
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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.