Making Life Go On

“Making life go on: how the war in Donbas affects civilians”/ Olena Nizhelska, Ж74 Natalya Kaplun, Kateryna Kotlyarova, Evheniya Bardyak, Denys Denysenko, Andriy Moskalenko, edited by Alina Bodnar, Anastasiya Nekrasova and Simon Schlegel/ East SOS, Civic Committee for the Protection of the Constitutional Rights and Freedoms of Citizens, Human Rights Civil Research Centre, Moloda Prosvita Prykarpattya, Eastern Ukrainian Centre for Civic Initiatives, Crisis Media Centre Siverskiy Donets. – K. : «Fenix Publishing House», 2018. – 196 p. ISBN 978-966-136-538-3 This report aims to shed light on the problems with which civilians in Eastern Ukraine struggled as a consequence of the armed conflict in the region. The main problems stem from the frequent shelling of towns and villages, from widespread lawlessness that led to the illegal imprisonment of thousands of people. Problems also occur because the belligerent parties position their weapons in densely populated areas and because medical assistance is difficult to access along the contact line. This edited volume contains an analysis of Ukrainian and international legislation and an analysis of the effects of armed conflict on civilian life in Donbas. The authors have also formulated recommendations for governmental and non-governmental organizations within and beyond Ukraine. The volume is targeted at civil society activists, journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders as well as a broader audience concerned about the situation in Eastern Ukraine. ISBN 978-966-136-538-3 © East SOS, 2018 © Civic Committee for the Protection of the Constitutional Rights and Freedoms of Citizens, 2018 © Human Rights Civil Research Centre, 2018 © Moloda Prosvita Prykarpattya, 2018 © Eastern Ukrainian Centre for Civic Initiatives, 2018 © Crisis Media Centre Siverskiy Donets, 2018 © Cover photo, Denys Denysenko, 2018 CONTENTS WOUNDED TRIOKHIZBENKA 11 OLENA NIZHELSKA “OUR ARTILLERY IS TARGETING THE FIRING 31 POSITIONS AND CLUSTERS OF THE NAZIS” NATALIYA KAPLUN 24 JANUARY 2015, MARIUPOL’S BLACK SATURDAY: 64 EYEWITNESSES ABOUT THE SHELLING DENYS DENYSENKO CIVILIAN LIVES RIPPED APART BY WAR 95 ANDRIY MOSKALENKO IN BATMAN’S PRISONS 118 KATERYNA KOTLYAROVA ACCESS TO MEDICAL ASSISTANCE FOR VICTIMS OF THE ARMED CONFLICT IN UKRAINE 162 EVHENIYA BARDYAK LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ATO – anti-terrorist operation BMP – infantry fighting vehicle CF – charitable foundation IDP – internally displaced person GBV – gender-based violence RRU – rapid response unit “DPR” – self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” SARG – sabotage, assault and reconnaissance group AFU – Armed Forces of Ukraine CCU – Criminal Code of Ukraine EECP – entry-exit checkpoint “LPR” – self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic” MIA – Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine IHL – International Humanitarian Law ICC – International Criminal Court MOD – Ministry of Defense of Ukraine OSCE – Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OAG – Organized Armed Group UN – United Nations ORDLO – particular districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions MLRS – multiple-launch rocket system SPA – self-propelled artillery SSU – Security Service of Ukraine SMM – OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine FOREWORD We rarely hear about the suffering inflicted by the war upon civilians, except for occasional news about internally displaced people. Most news speak about the military. People who stayed in their home region and sustained serious damages due to the war are almost never heard. Yet, they are hostages of the situation and they definitely did not choose to be in this war. Many of them lost what was most valuable–their health or a family member. We believe that testimonies about events of this kind need to be documented, so that the perpetrators will face just punishment when the time comes. This is why we started our work in this direction. “An individual, his/her life and health, honor and dignity, invio- lability and security shall be recognized in Ukraine as the highest social value”, says the Constitution of Ukraine. International law as well recognizes the life and health of a person as the highest value. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states the right to life, and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the European Convention on Human Rights) obliges the state to protect this right. Unfor- tunately, the implementation of these declared principles is a difficult task in practice. A team of documentators from member organizations of the Co- alition “Justice for Peace in Donbas” collected information about conflict-related human rights violations for many months. The documented cases describe a range of human tragedies: people were illegally detained in places unsuitable for detention; some were also subjected to inhuman treatment, abuse and torture. We also collected many interviews, in which people talked about losing their property through shelling. 7 Since late 2014, human rights defenders of the Coalition “Justice for Peace in Donbas” have regularly travelled to the Donbas region to record such cases. They all have in common that their protag- onists played a part in the war they did not choose. They became wounded, prisoners or homeless suddenly and while going about their daily business. They all shared the feeling that they had done nothing wrong and that the war was other people’s business. The people portrayed here had nothing to gain from it. In this all the cases reported here are representative of the biggest and most vulnerable group of victims this war has produced: civilians who could not or did not want to leave the conflict zone. Some still seem incredulous when they recount how quickly their region turned violent. There are plenty of reports in which this group appears as a statistic, the IDPs, those who have to cross the contact line in order to make their ends meet, those who have suffered permanent health damage. The authors of the case stud- ies tell the stories behind the statistics. This is not because statistics are unnecessary, but because they cannot tell the full story of how violence turns people’s lives upside-down. The cases reported here are not necessarily representative of the entire conflict. The suffering and the ways of coping are unique to every single informant. In order to document the wide varieties of suffering, the interviews conducted as the basis for this report have a systematic part, a questionnaire that is meant to produce Foreword testimony so precise that it could be used in court. However, we didn’t want to just ask people what had happened to them but also how they made sense of what had happened to them. There- fore we asked people how the war changed their lives, how they themselves changed their views, and how they see their future now. We directed particular attention to the shelling of residential areas. We described incidents of shelling of Mariupol which led to dozens of casualties. We tell the story of lives ruined by the shelling of Triokhizbenka, a village in Luhansk Oblast. The story about the shelling of Bakhmut, a town located on the frontline, speaks about human tragedies that became almost normal in the area of armed conflict. We also covered the operations of one of the largest networks of illegal detention facilities of the Rapid Response Unit “Batman”. Hundreds of innocent men and wom- en became victims of this organized armed group. The health of prisoners in the facilities run by Batman suffered due to cruel treatment. Some witnessed their cellmates die. 8 Moreover, this publication includes an overview concerning pro- vision of medical assistance in the liberated areas and the tempo- rarily occupied territories. It describes the standards of medical assistance in accordance with the international and domestic le- gal norms, as well as the actual state of assistance in the liberated or occupied areas, or the “grey zone”. What unites our informants, no matter whether they became prisoners in a basement dungeon or whether their apartment block was hit by a grenade, many of them felt powerless and be- trayed long after they were back in safety. The state was often slow in helping those in need. In many instances military inter- ests were given priority over human rights and the promise of reconstruction materialized too slowly. In the end of this publication, we suggested measures for the parties of the conflict. In the future, these measures could sig- nificantly reduce the number of people affected by the said violations. Each chapter is based on interviews conducted by documentators of the Coalition between August 2017 and February 2018. The authors also examined open-source background information. All authors of this publication represent human rights organizations from the Coalition “Justice for Peace in Donbas”. This work would not be possible without their input. For months, the authors were collecting, processing and analyzing information for each chapter in this book. In early December 2017, they also took part in a seminar on conflict-sensitive reporting conducted by Jutta Sommerbauer, an Austrian journalist. Collaborating on this report was not only pleasant but also en- lightening. The choice of topics and of stories led to discussions that touched upon the basic questions how to represent a war, its victims and perpetrators truthfully and objectively, especially if the war is still grinding on. A sincere effort to remain objective brought us to the thin line between conflict-sensitive reporting and self-censorship, between representing different viewpoints and outright relativism. The question how to choose a good informant led to the question, who is entitled to speak about the war at all under the circum- stances of disinformation and propaganda. This book is a result of these discussions that are of course far from being resolved. But engaging in such debates is a first step back to look at the 9 conflict with more distance and to discover the glimpses of hope for peace that may be on the horizon.

Load more