Both parties to the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine are responsible for numerous human rights abuses, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint report.
“Both the Ukrainian government authorities and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine are holding civilians in prolonged, arbitrary, and sometimes secret detention and torturing them,” Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in their report based on interviews with 40 victims of abuses, their family members, witnesses, victims’ lawyers, and other sources.
“Torture and secret detention are not historical – or unknown – practices in Ukraine. They are taking place right now, on both sides of the conflict,” Eurasia Research Director at Amnesty International Denis Krivosheev was quoted as saying in a statement available on the HRW website.
Both parties are aware of these abuses but keep turning a blind eye to them, he said.
The Ukrainian authorities and pro-Ukrainian paramilitary groups “have detained civilians suspected of involvement with or supporting Russian-backed separatists, while the separatist forces have detained civilians suspected of supporting or spying for the Ukrainian government,” the statement said.
Rachel Denber, HRW deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, said the report presented 18 cases of illegal detention of civilians. This was not the full picture, as a lot of such cases remain unknown, she said.
Both parties hold their civilian captives as “currency” for potential exchanges, Denber said.
In this context, the human rights organizations called on both parties not to allow human rights abuses, including ill-treatment of captives.
“The Ukrainian government and the de facto authorities in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk peoples’ republics should immediately end enforced disappearances and arbitrary and incommunicado detention, and put into effect zero tolerance policies for torture and ill-treatment of detainees,” the report said.
