Is the militia with the people?
Two-thirds of Ukrainians held in custody are exposed to police brutality
“They beat me for a long time. First, they hit me on the head with their fists, then with their regulation pistols, then with a plastic bottle filled with water; when I fell, Ukraine. Time for Action: Torture and Brutal Treatment in Police Detention. The document, which covers the period 2001-2005 and describes tortures meted out by Ukrainian law enforcement officers, was presented on Sept. 27. The findings are disheartening: all the individuals involved in a case under criminal investigation, and even individuals who have nothing whatsoever to do with a case, can be exposed to Ukrainian police brutality.
Kharkiv’s Institute for Social Studies recently conducted a survey of detained individuals. The results indicate that “62.4 percent of those interviewed who had been in police detention were subjected to ill treatment after being arrested: 44.6 percent had their arms, legs, or necks twisted; 32.8 percent were punched or kicked; and 3.8 percent claimed to have been subjected to torture and brutal treatment using special equipment. The research shows that, in addition to hands and feet, law enforcement officers most often use rubber truncheons to work over suspects. They have no compunctions about using handcuffs “over a long period of time (e.g., they handcuff suspects’ hands underneath their knees and keep them in that position for several days); plastic bottles filled with water; gasmasks; electric shocks; and suspending people from metal bars. The report also includes eyewitness testimonies from people who experienced this kind of treatment.
Where does this brutality come from? “More often than not militia officers resort to brutality and torture to make a suspect confess to having committed a crime,” says Heza McGill, Amnesty International’s reporter in Ukraine. Torture is a legacy of Soviet times, when criminal cases were solved at a high rate. Before 2003, militia investigative officers were required to show an 80-percent crime detection rate. The rate in the European countries is 20-40 percent. In 2003 Ukrainian law enforcement agencies were formally relieved of the obligation to solve eight out of every ten criminal cases, but the militia is still receiving reprimands from superiors for their low crime detection rates. So they try to make every suspect confess, even if these suspects are actually innocent. “The militia doesn’t know how to investigate crimes; they don’t have the skills,” says Arkadiy Bushchenko, an expert with Kharkiv’s human rights watch group, adding that “they declare they have nothing to investigate because the criminals confess to their wrongdoings. This is their modus operandi.” The militia’s “Raskolnikov” experts, as they are called by human rights advocates, most often forcefully extract confessions from suspects precisely when there is an obvious lack of incriminating evidence.
Another reason for exposing suspects to police brutality is benefit. This is precisely what happened in the case of Mykhailo Koval. Militia officers wanted him and his son to sign a statement to the effect that both were willing to hand over to the militia a gas pistol and a Bosch perforator.
Incidentally, police brutality does not mean just hitting people on the head with truncheons, but also bad conditions in temporary holding isolators (ITUs). Most buildings that house ITUs were built no later than the 19th century, and they lack the required sanitary and hygienic equipment, and ventilation. Habitually overcrowded detention cells complete the overall picture of police brutality. It is no exaggeration to describe as torture the incarceration of 16 suspects in SIZO (remand center) cells, who share 5.8 sq. m of floor space for 72 hours.
This is not the first time that the problem of militia brutality is being raised in Ukraine. Ombudswoman Nina Karpachova has been paying serious attention to this question in her annual reports. In a report issued on July 6, 2005, she stated that police brutality is widespread in Ukraine. In 2003 her office received 1,518 complaints, with 32,296 complaints forwarded to the interior ministry in 2002-03. It should be noted that the complaints that were formally accepted and registered represent a tiny fraction of actual moral and physical damages.
Quite often local prosecutor’s offices refuse to launch criminal proceedings in police brutality cases; victims must produce material evidence of having been subjected to torture, although this is precisely the prosecutor’s task. “They gouged out a suspect’s eye in Malyn,” says Tetiana Yablonska, a lawyer with the Ukrainian-American Human Rights Bureau, adding that “...the prosecutor’s office refused to initiate a criminal case. Then people in ski masks came to the suspect’s home and took him to the woods, where he was ‘persuaded’ to stop filing complaints.”
One option is to refer a case to the European Court of Human Rights, which now has on file some 30 police brutality complaints from Ukraine. Not so long ago, a Ukrainian national by the name of Afanasyev won a case against Ukraine. “The case of Afanasyev is a classical example of militia brutality, a classical example of the absence of investigation into the case,” says Bushchenko.
Law enforcement authorities recommend that the Ukrainian government take decisive measures to show the militia that police brutality will not be tolerated in this country, that such methods are legally prohibited and entail serious legal punishments. Prosecutors and judges, in turn, must handle every case in an unbiased manner. These are Amnesty International’s recommendations. Naturally, implementing them is rather problematic. However, some realistic measures can be taken, for example, obligatory audio/video recordings of all interrogations or carrying out regular inspections. Since 2003 an experiment has been underway in Kharkiv and Sumy oblasts to monitor the activities of local militia stations. Mobile task forces can visit any precinct at any time, enter any room, and interview any suspect. But they cannot interview a suspect in private, which makes it considerably more difficult to form a true picture of interactions between the militia and ordinary citizens. “There are countless infringements,” says Bushchenko, “and our detention cells are always packed with bums. If you don’t have a passport on you, you may easily fall into this category and spend 30 days in a detention cell without anyone investigating your case.”
In a word, the main thing is to get the ball rolling. Meanwhile, the current situation is very damaging to Ukraine’s image and its European integration, says Heza McGill. Remarkably, after the Orange Revolution and the changes in the militia administration, police brutality has not changed one bit.
