Maidan

At the present time the local authorities in Kherson have issued scurrilously defamatory claims about Dementiy Bily, television channels have kept the attack on the human rights defender and journalist quiet and those in power are pretending they know nothing

A number of Russian NGOs have issued a statement demanding an end to the process of intimidation via unscheduled checks by the prosecutor’s office. They state that from 13-16 September in Moscow and a number of other cities prosecutor’s bodies carried out mass unscheduled checks of unprecedented scale and haste

The treatment of Ruslan Zabilyi points to a reversion to regrettable and dangerous practices of the totalitarian past. We find this incident extremely worrying, especially in view of earlier illegitimate uses made of the SBU in the realm of academia and civil society under the new Ukrainian government.

The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union is outraged over the brutal beating of Dementiy Bily, journalist and Head of the Kherson Regional Branch of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine

An Open Letter to the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration in the light of her assertion that critics are commissioned, biased, have shady motives etc and her stated willingness to answer all questions. The latter, concerning disturbing trends away from media independence and towards manipulation of public opinion and unacceptable behaviour by enforcement bodies have long required response.

Letter from the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union and the Kharkiv Human Rights Group regarding the detention of Ruslan Zabily

The SBU [Security Service] asserts that the historian and Director of the National Memorial Museum of Victims of the Occupation Regimes “Tyurma na Lonskoho", Ruslan Zabily is an SBU employee and was detained for 14 and a half hours on Wednesday for planning to divulge State secrets.

On 8 September in Kyiv the Director of the National Memorial Museum of Victims of the Occupation Regimes “Tyurma na Lonskoho” (Lviv), Ruslan Zabily was detained for 14 and a half hours. The Press Centre of the Liberation Movement Research Centre reports that the historian was detained for his work with declassified documents.

The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union has received a document which shows that the President’s Administration is gathering information from around the entire country about, among other things, the political views of those in all leading positions

In recent days the Security Service [SBU] has joined the pressure exerted by the tax police and control and audit authorities on the Crimean opposition channel, Chornomorka. Its management believe the authorities are trying to make it bankrupt