German Foreign Minister Annalena Burbock met with representatives of human rights organisations, as well as relatives of civilian prisoners and survivors, during her visit to Kyiv on 11 September. This is her fourth visit since the full-scale war in Ukraine was unleashed by Russia.
The purpose of her visit, a week before the start of the UN General Assembly in New York, is to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine. Upon her arrival, Burbock pledged that Berlin would continue to support Kyiv in its fight against Russian aggression and on its path to the EU, and stressed the importance of justice for war crimes.
The meeting with Annalena Burbock was attended by the head of the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, Tetiana Pechonchyk, co-coordinators of the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MHR), Olga Reshetylova and Tatiana Katrychenko, victims of enforced disappearances and torture, Olha Cherniak, Oksana Zayaryna, Oleksandr Gunko, as well as relatives of civilian prisoners, Yulia Khrypun, Olena Rudenko and Ilya Honchar.
Tetyana Pechonchyk reminded that the Russian Federation has been committing enforced disappearances and illegal detentions of civilians in the occupied territories systematically since 2014. During the first years of the occupation of Crimea, the occupiers abducted 43 people, most of them Crimean Tatars. After the outbreak of the war in Donbas, the number of enforced disappearances was already in the hundreds, and many people were held and tortured on the territory of 'Izolyatsia'. Since the outbreak of full-scale war, the practice of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention has affected thousands of civilians in the newly occupied territories.
"With each new round of Russian aggression, the number of crimes increases. Russians do it because they can, because they feel completely unpunished and know that they will not be punished for it," she added.
The human rights activist noted that it is currently difficult to name the exact number of victims of enforced disappearances and illegal detentions, but ZMINA alone has recorded the abduction of more than 560 citizens, including volunteers, educators, journalists, and representatives of local authorities. The MHRC also has data on the abduction of more than a thousand Ukrainians.
According to Pechonchyk, the victims are most often held incommunicado, without informing their families. According to the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, in the cases documented by the organisation, more than 80 per cent of the victims reported being beaten, and half reported being tortured with electric shocks.
Olha Cherniak was an employee of the Korabelnyi District Council of Kherson. The Cherniak family - mother, father and son - were abducted by Russians from their Kherson apartment in August 2022. On the same day, they were taken to a temporary detention centre. The son was released after 15 days, the father after a month, and the mother spent 280 days in captivity. Olha Cherniak told Annalena Burbock that in captivity she was tortured with electricity until she lost consciousness and was forced to listen to her 19-year-old son being tortured with electricity. After her release, she learned that her husband had also been tortured. The Russians threatened to rape her family, and during her stay there, she constantly heard the screams of people being tortured.
The conditions in captivity were simply terrible. For more than six months in Novotroitske, the women were taken to the shower about three times, and because of the stuffiness, they were constantly feeling sick and had to call doctors. The prisoners also received two packs of instant noodles and a tin of canned meat for five people for the whole day. Captivity left serious consequences for Olga's health.
Oksana Zayaryna, a resident of Berdiansk, Zaporizhzhia region, also shared her story. The occupiers took the woman from her home and brought her to the so-called 'commandant's office', which used to be a police station, where she was tortured with electric shocks. Zayaryna was accused of helping the AFU, heading a terrorist organisation, and cooperating with the Ukrainian special services, and promised to be taken to the 'DPR' and imprisoned for 20 years because of her pro-Ukrainian views. In her presence, the Russians tortured other prisoners and watched to see what the reaction would be.
"My relatives were looking for me, but no human rights organisation - neither the OSCE, nor the UN, nor the Red Cross - came to visit us," Zayaryna said. After 86 days, the woman was released, having previously signed a "receipt" stating that she had no complaints about the actions of the Russian Federation. Three weeks later, she was able to leave the occupation.
Oleksandr Gunko is a journalist by profession and the editor-in-chief of the website Nova Kakhovka City. After the occupation of his hometown, he continued to work and cover the events. On 3 April 2022, he was illegally detained by a group of Russian soldiers at his home in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region. The 70-year-old spent three days in the local police station, sitting on a chair, handcuffed to a radiator. He was interrogated three times, accused of bias against the Russian military, whom he called the occupiers and 'orcs' in his publications. During the first interrogation, he was beaten. In addition, for three days he heard the torture of others. Oleksandr was released on 6 April 2022, only after filming a staged video for Russian television. Later, the Russians offered him the position of editor of a local newspaper, but he refused.
Yulia Khrypun 's father, Serhii, was taken prisoner on 24 March 2022 in Zaporizhzhia region. At first, he was held in the territory of the 'DPR', and then he was transferred to Russia. The family knows that Serhiy Khrypun was tortured and forced to stand for long periods of time without being able to sit or lie down. His detention in Russian captivity was confirmed by the Red Cross, but a year and a half has passed and Serhiy Khrypun has not yet been released. Together with three hundred other families, the Khrypuns united and created the Civilians in Captivity NGO, which fights for the release of illegally detained people.
Olha Rudenko said that her sister and her sister's husband were detained by the Russian military in the street and have not been contacted for four months. "The city is under occupation, and we do not know what happened to them or where they are. My sister's husband could only tell us that he was detained because of 'terrorism' and is awaiting trial. My sister and her husband are 62 years old and retired. We don't even know if they are alive or receiving medical care," she added.
Also speaking at the meeting with the German Foreign Minister was Ilya Gonchar, who said that his brother and mother tried to evacuate Mariupol last April when the city was surrounded. On 9 April 2022, his brother was detained on the border with Russia, and 18 months have passed since then, but no information has been received.
"It was only from other prisoners who were released that I found out that my brother was alive and in prison in the Rostov region," he said. Together with other families of the NGO Civilians in Captivity, Gonchar calls on the international community to seek the release of their relatives.
Olga Reshetylova, co-founder of the MHRH, noted that her organisation now has to document what she used to read about in the memoirs of dissidents in history classes at school - interrogations, torture, deportation to Siberia, murder: "I didn't think we would document such cases in our time. But because we studied history well, we know what happens next. Russia is using KGB methods: people will be transported deep into Russia, setting up camps for them where they will disappear. Associated Press journalists have found documents showing that Russians will build dozens of new camps for Ukrainian citizens."
Reshetylova stressed that all the mechanisms invented after the Second World War to control the treatment of civilians and their release are not currently working. Together with the coalition "Ukraine. Five in the Morning" coalition, the IHRC has developed recommendations and calls for the creation of an international working group to identify places where civilian prisoners are held and to seek their release. The human rights activist also called for sanctions to be imposed on all those involved in the illegal detention of civilians, including the heads of Russian colonies and detention centres.
"Enforced disappearances committed by the Russian Federation in Ukraine are not only a war crime, but also a crime against humanity. We hope that the International Criminal Court will pay attention to these investigations, as well as to the mechanisms of universal jurisdiction, which, in particular, are available in Germany," Reshetylova stressed.
Annalena Burbock added that Germany is working together with Canada to ensure that civilian prisoners are recognised as a category in which Russia commits a crime against humanity in Ukraine.
At the end of the meeting, Oleksandr Hunko presented the German Foreign Minister with a collection of his poems written during the occupation.
12.09.2023
