Kyiv, July 11, 2014 – Number of abductions and acts of tortures increases in Ukraine during past three months. new worrying cases are revealed with escalation of military conflict in Donbas. «Ministry of Internal informed that during the period of April-June 2014 about 500 notices of abduction were documented. UNO monitoring mission during last three months listed 232 cases. These numbers continue growing. Our research team received a list with names of over one hundred people who had been kept prisoners. Almost all these people mentioned tortures. Police officers, military men, journalists, politicians, international observers were among the abducted», – informed research mission member, Amnesty International in Ukraine spokesman Bohdan Ovcharuk during media briefing in Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
There is no exhaustive information about part of these abductions, at the same time, human rights activists state that the majority of abductions were conducted by armed separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Representative of Euromaidan SOS initiative Mariya Tomak noted that now in Donbas militants are using experience of hostages torturing proven during second Chechen war. «System of abducting hostages which has been implemented in Eastern Ukraine now, is identical to the one used in Chechnya, even on the level of personalities. Girkin known as Strelok (Shooter) or Strelkov is a personality from times of the second Chechen war. We know six cases in which his involvement into enforced disappearance of people has been fixed», – added Mariya Tokmak.
Amnesty International collected evidences of torture acts of abducted activists and journalists in the East of Ukraine during last months and published them in a special report.