Human rights group sees growing proof of abductions, torture in Ukraine
Amnesty International reports details of abductions, torture and beatings carried out by both pro-Russian rebels and forces loyal to Kiev during ongoing conflict
Armed separatist groups and pro-Kiev forces have abducted, beaten and tortured activists, protesters and journalists in eastern Ukraine over the last three months, Amnesty International said in a report published on Friday.
No thorough or reliable data is available on the number of abductions, the rights group said. But figures from Ukraine’s interior ministry show there were almost 500 between April and June, and the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission for Ukraine reported 222 cases in that time, it said.
“The bulk of the abductions are being perpetrated by armed separatists, with the victims often subjected to stomach-turning beatings and torture,” said Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s deputy director of Europe and Central Asia.
“There is also evidence of a smaller number of abuses by pro-Kiev forces,” he added.
In the report Amnesty cites pro-Ukraine activist Hanna, who was abducted by armed men in Donetsk in May, as saying: “At the end of the interrogation [he said] ‘Pray now – I’m going to kill you’, and then he slit [the back of] my neck with the knife.”
It also says an unnamed local government official in Mariupol reported having heard a captured separatist fighter “wailing in pain at the hands of pro-Kiev forces who were seemingly trying to extract information about the separatists”.