Open letter
To the President of Ukraine V.A. Yushchenko
To the Prime Minister of Ukraine Yu.V. Tymoshenko
To the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine A.P. Yatsenyuk
Most esteemed Viktor Andriiovych, Yuliia Volodymyrivna, and Arsenii Petrovych!
In this letter, we wish to draw your attention to serious shortcomings that have been observed for a long time in the activities of the State Department of Ukraine for the Execution of Sentences. Its activity is extremely closed, almost uncontrolled, and unaccountable to society. The agency, which is intended to contribute to increasing the safety of citizens, is increasingly becoming a source of very dangerous situations. Such a state leads to gross violations of the rights of convicts and the personnel of Department institutions, the use of illegal violence against those deprived of liberty, and numerous official abuses, in particular, the squandering of state funds. Human rights organisations periodically report these violations, and audits by the Main KRU (Control and Revision Office), the Tender Chamber, and the Government Interdepartmental Commission have revealed numerous financial abuses.
Summarising our experience in defending the rights of convicts, we are forced to state the following.
1. The Criminal-Executive Service in recent years has become even more closed to public control and the media. The real state of human rights observance in penal institutions is concealed by the agency’s leaders, and false information is often presented to society. There are already many examples of court decisions regarding the unlawful concealment of information, yet the Department’s management remains indifferent to these violations.
2. The consideration of high-profile complaints from convicts serving sentences is non-transparent and not public. Lawyers and human rights activists are often not admitted to convicts, and this leads to biased conclusions and well-founded doubts about the legality of the actions of the agency’s staff. The lack of reliable information about the activities of the system’s institutions makes an objective and impartial assessment of the state of human rights observance in the institutions impossible.
3. Over the last three years, the Criminal-Executive Service has declined. Brutal violations of human rights in penal institutions have become a common phenomenon. Convicts effectively have no opportunity to legally appeal the illegal actions of the administration; the prosecutor’s office is most often inactive; parliamentary control is absent; and any complaints provoke illegal violent actions on the part of the administration. Convicts are losing faith in the fair resolution of their problems and complaints. Brutal violations have prompted convicts in a whole number of penal institutions to turn to human rights organisations and central media regarding inhumane conditions of detention, torture, and cruel treatment, as well as to resort to protest actions in the form of hunger strikes and self-mutilation.
4. Numerous human rights violations are facilitated by an imperfect Criminal-Executive Code and by-laws. Criminal-executive legislation requires significant revision—both at the conceptual level and in details. Under current legislation, a convict is completely under the unlimited power of the administration, against whose actions they cannot even complain. Internal normative documents of the Department do not undergo proper examination and discussion—neither with experts nor with the public—and often contradict current legislation and international human rights norms and standards.
5. One such act of the Department is the infamous Order No. 167 of 10 October 2005, according to which a special anti-terrorism unit operates within the Department, which is also used for searches of convicts and the premises of penal institutions and pre-trial detention centres, but in reality—for intimidating those deprived of liberty. According to the Department’s data, in 2006, special forces were introduced into penal institutions 43 times. During such surprise searches, the unit, which has been nicknamed ‘mask-show’ by the people (its ‘fighters’ enter the institution in masks, with full equipment: body armour, batons, handcuffs, tear gas), commit brutal human rights violations. The scheme of their actions is always the same. These ‘fighters’ burst into pre-trial detention centre cells or living quarters of colonies shouting ‘everyone get on the floor!’, then begin to walk on the lying convicts, beat them with feet and batons on various parts of the body and head. They force everyone in turn to run into the corridor between rows of lined-up ‘fighters’, who continue to beat them with batons, force them to squat or sit in a ‘split’, crawl on the floor, squat a hundred times, and do push-ups from the floor. Other ‘fighters’ carry out a complete pogrom of the convicts’ personal belongings, destroying things and food, mixing sugar with tobacco and washing powder, spilling tea and coffee on the floor, and appropriating cigarettes, tinned food, lighters, etc.
The fighters of this unit are also used for terrible beatings of convicts who dare to complain about the actions of the administration. Information about horrific beatings on 22 January 2007 in Iziaslav Colony No. 31, 7 June 2007 in Bucha Colony No. 85, 10 November 2007 in Slovianoserbsk Colony No. 60, and others have reached the public sphere. First, the convicts are beaten, and then they are forced to write a paper saying they have no complaints. And the broken convict obediently repeats all this to the prosecutor and the forensic medical expert because he knows: he is completely dependent on the administration. As a result, it is as if the beating never happened. And it is impossible to verify information about the beatings: the system is closed. And if a prisoner does complain, the administration will find a pile of ways for revenge: deprivation of necessary medical assistance, destruction of personal belongings, the imposition of numerous disciplinary punishments for violations such as ‘did not sleep after lights out’, and detention in the DPK, SHIZO, and PKT, as well as the extension of terms of imprisonment through the application of Article 391 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Even after the cancellation of the state registration of Order No. 167 by the Ministry of Justice on 24 December 2007, on 31 January at 6:30, a group of approximately 25 special forces soldiers in masks with full combat equipment were introduced into Colony No. 46, located near the village of Katerynivka in the Sarny district of the Rivne region, who brutally beat 16 convicts.
We have written testimonies that sometimes the special forces were with weapons and dogs, and they claimed that the President gave them the right to use their weapons and dogs. Viktor Andriiovych, have you heard? In your name, they promise to shoot at convicts and bait them with dogs!
6. Audits of the financial and economic activity of the Department conducted in 2007 revealed a number of gross violations, abuses, and misuse of budget funds on a large scale. Thus, the Main Control and Revision Office revealed financial violations in the II quarter of 2007 alone that led to losses amounting to 7.9 million hryvnias (including expenditures with violations of legislation and non-targeted expenditures). Violations of procurement procedures were revealed in the total amount of 21.1 million UAH, and the Tender Chamber of Ukraine established gross violations of the requirements of current legislation in the total amount of 217.98 million UAH.
7. In the agency, social standards of justice have significantly decreased: the Department’s management shows personal immodesty by regularly awarding themselves bonuses in particularly large amounts against the background of the very small incomes of the majority of the service’s rank-and-file employees. Such concern of the leadership only for themselves generates increasing social inequality between leaders and employees of the middle and lower ranks of penal institutions and corrupt actions.
8. To a large extent, the reason for this state is the incompetence of the leadership of the Department for the Execution of Sentences, which is combined with active resistance to the fulfilment of Ukraine’s obligations to the Council of Europe upon accession to this international organisation in 1995 regarding the subordination of the agency to the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. Initiatives of the Ministry of Justice leadership to improve the situation are currently ignored by the Head of the Department, as the Ministry of Justice has no legal grounds to influence the Department’s activities.
We believe that the State Criminal-Executive Service, as an independent body of power, under the current leadership is unable to competently, responsibly, and effectively perform the functions and tasks assigned to it.
A significant number of materials regarding violations in the criminal-executive system have already been published and brought to the media. This gives us grounds to insist on taking decisive and effective actions to restore order and to affirm legality and respect for human rights in the State Criminal-Executive Service. It is urgently necessary to:
– pay attention to the numerous problems with the observance of human rights in penal institutions, to the level of competence of its leadership, and its ability to resolve current issues of prisoner detention;
– demand from the agency’s leadership strict adherence to standards of social justice, respect for the dignity of both prisoners and the system’s personnel, and real openness of its activities to the public, in particular, to human rights organisations and the media;
– finally show political will and subordinate the State Department of Ukraine for the Execution of Sentences to the Ministry of Justice, as required by the still unfulfilled obligations of Ukraine to the Council of Europe;
– consider the issue of the advisability of the further tenure of V.V. Koshchynets and his deputies, who, in our opinion, demonstrate an inability to manage such a complex and specific agency. The ability of the agency to ensure the fulfilment of the tasks set before it, the safety of society, and the image of the President, the Government, and Ukraine as a democratic and civilised European state significantly depend on the resolution of this personnel issue.
We declare that we will continue not to put up with the brutal violation of human rights in the criminal-executive system and with the official abuses that are characteristic today of the activities of the State Department for the Execution of Sentences,
Yevhen Zakharov, Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Kharkiv Human Rights Group
Oleksandr Bukalov, NGO ‘Donetsk Memorial’, Penitentiary Society of Ukraine
Oleksandr Betsa, independent expert on penitentiary issues