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0 Almost half of Ukrainian detainees held in camps in Kherson have been subjected to torture and sexual violence, according to new research by an international human rights law firm.
Analysis of cases across more than 35 identified detention centres revealed suffocation, waterboarding, electrocution, beatings and threats of rape to be widespread techniques imposed by Russian guards in the occupied region.
Global Rights Compliance’s Mobile Justice Team reviewed the stories of 320 people held in Kherson with Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG), with 43% reporting experiences of torture from their time detained.
Those held in the centres included volunteers, activists, medical leaders, teachers, community leaders, law enforcement and military personnel.
Wayne Jordash KC, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Global Rights Compliance, said: ‘The torture and sexual violence tactics the Office of the Prosecution is uncovering from the Kherson detention centres suggests that Putin’s plan to extinguish Ukrainian identity includes a range of crimes evocative of genocide.
‘At the very least, the pattern that we are observing is consistent with a cynical and calculated plan to humiliate and terrorise millions of Ukrainian citizens in order to subjugate them to the diktat of the Kremlin.’
A corridor in a place Ukrainians were detained on Pylypa Orlyka str., where Russians tried to start a fire in order to hide traces of their crimes and burn documents before retreating
Cobwebs smoky with soot in the basement of the detention camp on Pylypa Orlyka str.
The Mobile Justice Team, part of the UK, EU and US-sponsored Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA), was set up by international human rights law firm and foundation, Global Rights Compliance, in April 2022.
It is led by world-renowned British Barrister, Wayne Jordash KC. The team’s CRSV work is primarily funded by the EU.
Their unsettling uncovered new evidence of horrific sexual crimes committed by Russian soldiers in the centres, including genital electrocutions, threats of genital mutilation and being forced to witness the rape of another detainee with a foreign object.
One Russian soldier reportedly ordered the genital electrocution of 17 separate victims across the detention centres.
Evidence of the atrocities have mounted in recent months, with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Russia of war crimes in Kherson as early as November 2022.
Mass graves have been found across Ukraine since the start of the war in February last year.
Global Rights Compliance said that the reported ‘patterns’ of rape and other sexual crimes inflicted upon occupied people across Ukraine may point to a ‘premeditated plan on a systemic level’.
Anna Mykytenko, Senior Legal Adviser and Ukraine Country Manager, Global Rights Compliance said: ‘The true scale of Russia’s war crimes remains unknown, but what we can say for certain is that the psychological consequences of these cruel crimes on Ukrainian people will be engrained in their minds for years to come.
‘What we are witnessing in Kherson is just the tip of the iceberg in Putin’s barbaric plan to obliterate an entire population. Justice will be served for Ukrainian survivors as we continue our mission to identify and hold perpetrators accountable.
‘Impunity is not an option.’
The group said that the ‘hunt’ for the perpetrators is ‘well underway’.
The research, since the liberation of a large part of the Kherson Oblast in October 2022, has focused its investigations on the city and the large number of Ukrainian citizens who were detained and allegedly mistreated in the detention centres during Russian occupation.
The law firm has also analysed early evidence collected by the OPG since March 2022, Mykytenko told MailOnline.
This news follows an announcement by Global Rights Compliance in February 2023 which revealed evidence uncovering financial records directly linking the torture chambers to the Russian State.
A building of a detention centre in Kherson where Ukrainians were kept
Ukrainian detainees were forced to write and learn the National Anthem of Russia while held
In April, Ukrainian power plant workers also alleged they had been tortured by Russian invaders after refusing to ‘help’ during the occupation last year.
Employees of the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Russian-occupied Enerhodar told of how they were brutalised by invading forces.
One anonymous alleged victim told The Times: ‘I had bruises and blood down my face. I’d been beaten around the head and body with a rubber baton… they held a pistol with rubber bullets about a metre or two from my leg and fired.’
Some claimed their colleagues were killed by Russian forces during the occupation.
11,000 workers were employed at the Zaporizhzhia power station when Russian forces claimed occupation on 24 February 2022, the first day of the war.
Separately, Russian invaders last year forced 367 people into a school basement in occupied Yahidne, north of Kyiv, measuring 200 square metres.
The villagers, including an 18-month-old baby, were kept there for almost a month, and 11 of them died.
One of the survivors said some people died from lack of oxygen in the small cellar.
Wayne Jordash KC told MailOnline at the time: ‘There can be no doubt that Russian forces were working to a plan.
‘At the very least, Russia intended to destroy Ukraine as a nation through a concerted campaign of international crimes.
‘Over 450 civilians met their untimely deaths and hundreds more were disappeared, tortured, sexually violated or injured during the almost one month of occupation at the hands of this brutal force.
‘The Russian plan for Bucha is now as clear as day: they wanted to eliminate any semblance of Ukrainian resistance and identity in the town, and they were willing to stop at nothing – terrorism, torture and indiscriminate murder of civilians included – to achieve this goal.’
Ukrainian prosecutors in May said that they had registered 85,000 Russian war crimes since the war started.
The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes back in March.
The ICC is only able to hear a case if the country where the offence was committed is a party to the Rome Statute – which established international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression – or if the perpetrator’s county of origin is party to the statute.
As it stands, Ukraine has signed the 1998 treaty but not yet ratified it.
Russia was a signatory but withdrew its signature in 2016.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky leaves the basement of a school, in the village of Yahidne, Chernihiv region, where all the residents were jailed during the Russian occupation
Halyna Tolochina stands in front of a wall inscribed with the names of people who died inside a school basement, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in the village of Yahidne
Global Rights Compliance, founded in 2013, is an international human rights law firm and foundation, specialising in international humanitarian law, international criminal law and business and human rights.
Global Rights Compliance’s mission is to provide justice through the innovative application of international law.
Its Mobile Justice Team is providing specialised front-line operational expertise support to the Office of the Prosecutor General [OPG] in Ukraine.
The Team is made up of a mixture of Ukrainian and foreign expert investigators and lawyers.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
