DEC 29, 2015
War crimes in occupied Donbas: prisoners tortured, witnessed executions | Euromaidan Press
Terror as a Method of Warfare
In the spring of 2014, armed thugs started to kidnap and torture people to establish control over the region. Ordinary people from Donbas were kidnapped and tortured.
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We saw the first hints of what was yet to come when 22-year-old Donetsk activist
Dmytro Cherniavskyi was murdered during a peaceful protest turned into a bloody massacre, and when pro-Ukrainian deputy
Volodymyr Rybak was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered for his attempt to re-establish the Ukrainian flag on his city’s administration building.
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The Work of “Death Squads”
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We identified 79 locations where people have been held in captivity. The locations are administrative buildings, military commissariats, offices, private premises, hotels and hostels, cafeterias, industrial enterprises, plants and factories, basements, garages, drainage wells [sewers], cages, dog cages. In the majority of cases, they are all unsuitable even for short-term detentions.
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These photos are taken by the “Coalition For Peace and Justice in Donbas” during their monitoring visits to the “basements” after the liberation of the territories.
Revival of Medieval Inquisition
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Half of those detainees [one of every two people] were tortured and threatened with cruelty. Of those 12% of them are women.
71% suffered physical and psychological pain throughout the length of their detention.
Approximately 46% who escaped torture themselves became direct witnesses of others being tortured.
Approximately 16% of surveyed people knew of extrajudicial executions and victims who died as a result of being tortured.
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"They really abused him badly. They carved the word “Bandera” on his chest and murdered him. ... They didn’t even take him to the morgue for about two weeks. After that he was exchanged as cargo-200 [the code word referring to Russian military casualties who come home in coffins as cargo- ed]
. ...
"They would bring them in around 9:00 p.m. in the evening and I couldn’t fall asleep until about 4 a.m. because of their screams. They screamed so much that it made my hair stand on end. Then I could hear them being taken out dragged across the ground to the door of our garage. I heard them talking about what they should do with them. ... I understood then that they were dragging the bodies, and I could hear bodies falling."
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The military commanders of the Kremlin republics gladly used the illegally detained civilians for slave labor. 58% of respondents reported being used as forced labor. They dug trenches, restored buildings, cleaned streets, carried loads, unloaded the Russian “humanitarian” convoys, in which weapons were brought to the occupied territories.
Certain prisoners were forced to defuse landmines and carry out exhumations. Some were forced to wash off blood from buses carrying corpses, to dig and bury the dead. Needless to say, such “work” causes great psychological and physical harm.
A basement in Severodonetsk.
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Russia’s Responsibility
The testimony given by these detained individuals provides substantial evidence of Russia’s effective control over the illegal armed groups. ...
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This is what a captive priest said:
"When we were brought to Perevalsk House of Culture to Kozitsyn [a militant leader–ed]
on 23 July 2014, they recognized me, having seen me on Russian TV performing on the Maidan stage [during Euromaidan protests–ed.]
in Kyiv. They put a bag over my head and put a plastic bag over my mouth, tied my hands and legs and began to burn my feet and beat my ribs."
"I was beaten so badly that I wet myself. Later because of the smell and everything it was repulsive for them to beat me, and this helped me. They burned my legs with a lighter, beat me with an electroshocker, squeezed my eyes out, tore my mouth, shoved a cross up into my anus… I just lay there in the corner for almost a day. Then we were taken to Russia."
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Will Motorola be the Chairman of Donetsk Regional State Administration
Exchanges of prisoners are currently halted. There are rumors that the militants are demanding total amnesty.
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“Peace is better than war.” This is what European officials say to avoid directly answering the question: Will Ukraine grant amnesty to war criminals. They say that the issue of amnesty always presents a difficult dilemma.
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The governments of democratic countries rightly demanded from Ukraine that it effectively investigate and punish the perpetrators of crimes during Euromaidan as a move toward the establishment of justice. Now it is our turn to return the message to the European Union and urge them to follow their own values.
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Ukraine is struggling not only for its territory, but also for the people who live on its territory. So when we talk about releasing hostages, we mean not only the civilians tortured in cellars, and not only over seven hundred missing soldiers and the relatives who still await their return home.
A basement in Sloviansk.
We are talking about nearly three million people in the occupied territories, whose main task now is to survive. More than two million people cannot return home. The residents of nearly 200 settlements, which are located along the 350 km length contact line, remain under periodic artillery fire.
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