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FACTBOX-UN REPORT DOCUMENTS RUSSIAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN OCCUPIED UKRAINE

This content was published on March 20, 2024 - 15:04
4 minutes

KYIV (Reuters) – The UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has
released its first comprehensive report on the situation in the territories of
Ukraine occupied since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The mission is part of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OHCHR).

Although the U.N. did not have access to Russian-occupied areas, the report was
based on 2,319 remote and in-person interviews with witnesses and victims.

“Many people living under occupation have endured intimidation and repression,
facing a constant threat of violence, detention, and punishment,” the report
concluded, adding that in these cases nobody had been held accountable.

Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed
atrocities during the invasion, which it claims is a “special military
operation”.

Here are some of the report’s findings:

KILLINGS 

The report said its investigators had verified the executions of 26 civilians,
including two children, on the spot, for instance during house searches, as well
as the killing of a further 30 civilians during detention. Most executions were
committed between March and May 2022, it said.

TORTURE AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE

The report said torture in places of detention was widespread.

“OHCHR received credible and reliable accounts regarding the treatment of 171
civilian detainees and found that 90% of them had been tortured or ill-treated,”
it said.

“Russian armed forces, law enforcement and penitentiary authorities used several
types of violence: severe beating, kicking, cutting, putting sharp objects under
the fingernails, waterboarding, mock executions, and applying electric shocks.”

Forty-eight civilian detainees, including a child, were subjected to
conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and genital mutilation, the
report said. 

OHCHR also documented cases of sexual violence by Russian armed forces on 16
civilians outside of detention — almost all of these were women.

ARBITRARY DETENTION

According to the report, Russia’s armed forces conducted widespread arbitrary
detentions and forced disappearances during their occupation.

These initially targeted those perceived to be connected to Ukraine’s army or
security services, but this was gradually widened to broader categories of
civilians believed to oppose the occupation.

In total, OHCHR documented 687 cases of arbitrary detention in the occupied
areas up until December 2023: 587 men, 92 women, seven boys and one girl.

RUSSIAN PASSPORTS

The report found that Russia has pressured local residents to take Russian
passports. This pressure has been applied through the workplace and through
economic pressures.

It also said people’s access to social benefits and healthcare was restricted if
they did not take a Russian passport.

COLLABORATION

The report found that Russia used intimidation and violence to pressure civil
servants in fields such as law enforcement and education to work under the
Russian system. Journalists were pressured not to write “pro-Ukrainian”
articles, it said.

However, the report also criticised the wording of Ukraine’s law punishing
collaboration with occupying forces as “vague and imprecise.”

“The Ukrainian law on collaboration also risks criminalizing conduct which the
Occupying Power can lawfully compel individuals to carry out … and which might
be essential for or benefit the normal life of the population of the occupied
territory,” the report said.

JUSTICE

The report found that approximately 1,600 civilian prisoners serving sentences
in Ukraine’s Kherson region before February 2022 had been transferred to Russian
prisons.


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