Suicides and torture have become a common occurrence in Ukrainian prisons. VHRG statement.

Suicides and torture have become a common occurrence in Ukrainian prisons.


Recently, information has been arriving en masse regarding brutal violations of the rights of convicts in places of confinement, and over the last ten days in Ukraine, four convicts have taken their own lives.
This is stated in a report by the Vinnytsia Human Rights Group, the text of which is in the possession of UNIAN.
Thus, over the last day, the Vinnytsia Human Rights Group received information about mass beatings of convicts in Stryzhavka Correctional Colony No. 81 and in Temnivska Correctional Colony No. 100 (Kharkiv region).
According to the information in the possession of the VHRG, on 7–8 June, three convicts were brutally beaten by staff of Stryzhavka CC No. 81. “There are signs of beatings on the bodies of the convicts, which is why the colony administration is doing everything possible to prevent the press and human rights activists from meeting with them,” reports the VHRG.
According to the human rights activists, the reason for the beating is “the convicts’ disagreement with the brutal humiliation of human dignity by the colony administration and the warning from the convicts that they would resort to peaceful protest actions against the humiliations.”
According to the VHRG report, there are more than 60 people in the isolation ward of Colony No. 100; on 7 June, four convicts were subjected to torture. “Among the methods of torture used against the convicts are: beating, wrapping the hands and feet in damp towels, which causes severe pain after the towels dry, ‘stretching’, ‘tying to a radiator with handcuffs’,” the report says.
Human rights activists are appealing to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Nina KARPACHOVA, with a request to visit Colonies No. 100 and No. 81 and meet with the convicts who, according to reports, have been subjected to torture.