Factbox-UN report paperwork Russian rights abuses in occupied Ukraine By Reuters

KYIV (Reuters) – The UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has launched its first complete report on the scenario within the territories of Ukraine occupied since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The mission is a part of the Workplace of the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Though the U.N. didn’t have entry to Russian-occupied areas, the report was based mostly on 2,319 distant and in-person interviews with witnesses and victims.

“Many individuals dwelling beneath occupation have endured intimidation and repression, going through a relentless menace of violence, detention, and punishment,” the report concluded, including that in these circumstances no person had been held accountable.

Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have dedicated atrocities in the course of the invasion, which it claims is a “particular navy operation”.

Listed below are a number of the report’s findings:

KILLINGS 

The report mentioned its investigators had verified the executions of 26 civilians, together with two kids, on the spot, as an example throughout home searches, in addition to the killing of an extra 30 civilians throughout detention. Most executions have been dedicated between March and Might 2022, it mentioned.

TORTURE AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE

The report mentioned torture in locations of detention was widespread.

“OHCHR acquired credible and dependable accounts concerning the therapy of 171 civilian detainees and located that 90% of them had been tortured or ill-treated,” it mentioned.

“Russian armed forces, regulation enforcement and penitentiary authorities used a number of kinds of violence: extreme beating, kicking, chopping, placing sharp objects beneath the fingernails, waterboarding, mock executions, and making use of electrical shocks.”

Forty-eight civilian detainees, together with a baby, have been subjected to conflict-related sexual violence, together with rape and genital mutilation, the report mentioned. 

OHCHR additionally documented circumstances of sexual violence by Russian armed forces on 16 civilians outdoors of detention — nearly all of those have been girls.

ARBITRARY DETENTION

In line with the report, Russia’s armed forces performed widespread arbitrary detentions and compelled disappearances throughout their occupation.

These initially focused these perceived to be linked to Ukraine’s military or safety providers, however this was progressively widened to broader classes of civilians believed to oppose the occupation.

In whole, OHCHR documented 687 circumstances of arbitrary detention within the occupied areas up till December 2023: 587 males, 92 girls, seven boys and one woman.

RUSSIAN PASSPORTS

The report discovered that Russia has pressured native residents to take Russian passports. This strain has been utilized via the office and thru financial pressures.

It additionally mentioned folks’s entry to social advantages and healthcare was restricted if they didn’t take a Russian passport.

COLLABORATION

The report discovered that Russia used intimidation and violence to strain civil servants in fields resembling regulation enforcement and training to work beneath the Russian system. Journalists have been pressured to not write “pro-Ukrainian” articles, it mentioned.

Nevertheless, the report additionally criticised the wording of Ukraine’s regulation punishing collaboration with occupying forces as “obscure and imprecise.”

“The Ukrainian regulation on collaboration additionally dangers criminalizing conduct which the Occupying Energy can lawfully compel people to hold out … and which could be important for or profit the conventional lifetime of the inhabitants of the occupied territory,” the report mentioned.

JUSTICE

The report discovered that roughly 1,600 civilian prisoners serving sentences in Ukraine’s Kherson area earlier than February 2022 had been transferred to Russian prisons.