Law Enforcement Officers Need Protection

Up to 5,000 law enforcement officers from eleven of Ukraine’s oblasts protested outside Verkhovna Rada on March 20 (see photo) “to voice their attitude toward the events of March 9,” demanding higher pay, restitution of their former benefits, and urging lawmakers to investigate “the disgraceful events near the Shevchenko Monument on March 9” and punish the instigators, Interfax-Ukraine reports the Chairman of Internal Affairs Ministry Council of Veterans, Viktor Malyshev, as saying. Mr. Malyshev expressed hope that Verkhovna Rada will take steps to prevent its caucus leaders and deputies “from heading the so-called peaceful demonstrators who will subject police to beatings... We are protecting law and order in the country and the country must protect us and remunerate us adequately for our efforts,” he added.

Urged by police demonstrators, lawmakers agreed to allow their representative, Lt. Gen. Petro Mykhailenko, to address parliament. In his speech in the legislature he said that police veterans had been outraged by the way the opposition leaders organized their protests on March 9 during which, he claimed, 59 police officers had received severe injuries. The general also stressed that police officers showed maximum self-control in preventing bloodshed. But, as usual, those behind the disorders will try to put the blame on the police, leaving the real organizers in the shadows, he said.

He then pointed to inadequate funding for the ministry, saying that pay in the force are the lowest in comparison to other law enforcement agencies. The general also declared that 54 policemen had been killed and 356 injured in the line of duty last year.

Speaking on behalf of police veterans, Mykhailenko called on the parliament to evaluate the actions of those lawmakers who incited the protesters on March 9 to attack the police and commission the appropriate justice bodies to assess the legality of such organizations as the radical nationalist UNA-UNSO. In addition, police veterans demand the government implement Article 62 of the law on the 2000 state budget and compensate police officers and veterans for the state social guarantees they lost.

Pickets by police which, quite astonishingly, coincided with rumors of Internal Affairs Minister Yuri Kravchenko’s possible dismissal, could not but create the assumption that the pickets had been organized to support Kravchenko.

In a related move, Internal Affairs Ministry Kyiv Public Relations Center Director Oleksandr Zarubytsky flatly denied the involvement of any political forces or members of policemen families in staging police veterans pickets outside parliament. “The protests were carried out on the initiative of veteran organizations, not of politicians who are doing everything to deepen the political crisis in Ukraine,” he declared. In his opinion, the demands of police are legal due to their low pay, which they spend to pay for their apartments and other social needs... The patience of police has been exhausted following statements by some politicians, lawmakers and contracted mass media on the developments on March 9 and the role of the police.”