17:02 27.09.2018

Human rights defenders submit motion on sexual violence during Donbas conflict to ICC

2 min read

KYIV. Sept 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Eastern Ukrainian Community Initiatives Center, (a member of the coalition of human rights organizations Justice for Peace in Donbas) and FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) have submitted a motion on sexual violence during the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine to the office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

"This contains about a hundred pages of text that we sent to the office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court within the framework of the official procedure the day before yesterday," Chairman of the NGO East Ukrainian Center of Public Initiatives Volodymyr Shcherbachenko said at a press conference in the press center of the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Thursday.

The submitted document refers to the preliminary examination of the situation in Ukraine over the past three years. Also, the document contains 58 testimonies of people who saw the facts of sexual violence or were themselves the object of such violence.

Based on the documented and analyzed material, human rights defenders identified 121 illegal places of freedom deprivation in the temporarily occupied territory of Donbas, in particular 40 places where facts of sexual violence were confirmed. Among them, there are places where violence was systemic in nature.

In particular, it is about the former premises of the SBU in occupied Donetsk, the premises of the former department of Nova Poshta No. 22 in Donetsk, the military base in the "Motel" area in Donetsk, the UBOP (Organized Crime Division) in occupied Horlivka, garages near the "Kohana" store in Luhansk, hostel of the Dahl University, the former premises of Zhovtneva district administration in Luhansk.

FDIH and the Eastern Ukrainian Community Initiatives Center report that they collected facts that confirm that sexual violence was carried out in the context of an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine or as part of a systematic attack on the civilian population.

According to Natalia Hrytsenko, a researcher at the NGO East Ukrainian Center of Public Initiatives, it deals with such sexual crimes as rape, coercion to prostitution, coercion to nudity, and others.

This appeal is aimed at persuading the prosecutor to conduct a full investigation of sexual crimes within the framework of the statute of the International Criminal Court.

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