President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko

Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yurii Lutsenko

Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimes Hiunduz Mamedov

On April 13, the venue of the International Center for Policy Studies (ICPS) in Kyiv had been searched by employees of the Office of the Prosecutor of AR Crimea, because of the case of the so-called Artemenko’s peace plan. MP Andrii Artemenko is being charged with treason under Art. 111 of the Criminal Code. He is charged with helping Russia to conduct subversive activities against Ukraine. Namely, he calls to lease Crimea to the Russian Federation for a long term and thereby legitimize the temporary occupation. As stated in the court order to search, the basis of the Artemenko’s peace plan is “The idea for resolving the conflict in Donbas”, authored by ICPS Chairman Vasyl Filipchuk.

We do not share views of MP Artemenko on ways of “peaceful solution”, but state the illegality of the charges of treason for the presentation of any ideas, including ideas for a peaceful solution.

We are outraged by the search of the ICPS analytical center within the investigation of treason. These government actions are the violation of Article 34 of the Constitution of Ukraine, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and contrary to the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (Zana v. Turkey (1997), Lingens v. Austria (1986), § 40; Barfod v. Denmark (1989), Wille v. Liechtenstein (1999) та інші).

The search in ICPS is not limited to violations of the Constitution of Ukraine and international agreements. We qualify the following actions of the state as offensive to the key freedom of expression as an attempt to monopolize the market of ideas and to impose the doctrine as the only possible in the society, under pain of prosecution of those who offer other approaches, especially charges of a serious crime – treason. The disproportionate state interference in the activities of analytical centers is a purely obscurantist attempt to establish a monopoly on the truth.

ICPS conducts mainly research and scientific activities. If Ukraine declares its desire to become a full member of the EU, so the state violates a fundamental principle of the European Union, enshrined in Art. 13 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000), according to which the arts and scientific research shall be free of constraint. Instead, this is the doctrine of the Russian world, characterized by state monopoly on the truth, restrictions on freedom of expression, persecution for beliefs. Our war with Russia is primarily a war of values. These government actions are to a defeat of values, surrender of public interest and “treason” in the long run. It is not possible to fight the Russian world using means of the Russian world.

We demand to stop the persecution of the ICPS analytical center and immediately return everything that had been seized during the search.

In this incident, we see the manifestation of the trend to violate balance between national security and human rights for the benefit of national security by the Security Service of Ukraine and prosecutors. We want to repeat that the political regime that violates human rights is doomed to failure.

Arkadiy Bushchenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union

Yevhen Zakharov, Director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group