Secret detention centers of SBU

Secret prisons of SBU are secret detention facilities operated by Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Eastern Ukraine to incarcerate alleged Russian-backed separatists. According to multiple reports of UN monitoring mission in Ukraine,[1] Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch the practice of unacknowledged detention is accompanied by widespread torture and various forms of human rights abuses.[2] Dutch journalist Chris Kaspar de Ploeg in his book "Ukraine in the Crossfire"[3] said about the prisons that their "practices happen completely in the dark" emphasizing that the supporting evidence about the facilities has been documented independently by the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.[4]

The Ukrainian authorities refuse to acknowledge the existence of the prisons, but the enforced disappearances keep happening when Ukrainian security forces detain people and try to conceal their fate.[5]

Investigative history

A first evidence of enforced disappearances in Eastern Ukraine committed by the Security Service of Ukraine was reported by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR, United Nations) in August 2014. Since then each new UN report provided more facts and new episodes of the activity.[6]

In 2015, UN monitoring mission in Ukraine published a testimonies of detainees, who were held incommunicado in secret SBU detention facility located in Kharkiv. The Ukrainian secret service has denied the allegations.[7]

An official report of UN Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued in 2016 has presented multiple cases of unlawful, unacknowledged detention in SBU premises in Kharkiv, Izyum, Kramatorsk, and Mariupol. Investigation revealed that Ukrainian pro-government forces, including members of volunteer battalions, held civilian victims in prolonged, secret captivity. Later the detained individuals were handed over to the Security Service of Ukraine. During the incarceration the detainees were tortured, beaten, subjected to electric shocks, threatened with sexual abuse, execution, and retaliation against family members in order to retrieve their confessions. Eventually some of them were transferred into a regular criminal justice system, some other ones were later exchanged for people captured by the rebel forces or released without trial.[8]

By August 2016 the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights made a conclusion that "Ukrainian authorities have allowed the deprivation of liberty of individuals in secret for prolonged periods of time".[6]

For example, one of the prisoners, Mykola Vakaruk, spent in the custody more than 600 days, suffering from repeated beatings and freezing cold. As a result of improper conditions he lost a kidney. Being in hospital he was forced to adopt a fake identity before undergoing kidney surgery. Finally he was released with compensation around 100 hryvnias (less than $4).[9]

In 2018, the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said that the victims of arbitrary detention in government-controlled secret prisons in Eastern Ukraine continue to face new, serious obstacles to justice.[10][11]

References
  1. Kiev allows torture and runs secret jails, says UN
  2. Watchdogs: Civilians Detained, Tortured in Eastern Ukraine
  3. De Ploeg, Chris Kaspar (2017). Ukraine in the crossfire. Atlanta, GA. ISBN 978-0-9972870-8-0. OCLC 961002230.
  4. Chris Kaspar de Ploeg "Ukraine in the Crossfire" p. 139 ISBN 978-0-9978965-4-1
  5. Human rights groups sound alarm on secret detentions in Ukraine The Telegraph
  6. Sergiy Kudelia Extrajudicial Violence in Donbas and Its Consequences for Ukraine PONARS Eurasia 2017
  7. Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine 1 December 2014 to 15 February 2015 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
  8. “You Don’t Exist” Arbitrary Detentions, Enforced Disappearances, and Torture in Eastern Ukraine
  9. Tortured and a kidney lost: Life in Ukraine’s illegal ‘secret prisons’
  10. Ukraine: Justice Needed for Former Secret Prison Detainees
  11. Human Rights Watch: Justice needed for former secret prison detainees
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