«There Can Be No Real Peace Talks if People are Not Put in the First Place». The People First! Campaign Was Presented at the Events in Brussels

9 April was a Day of Ukraine in the European Parliament in Brussels as several forums, conferences and round tables on Ukraine’s future were held there, attended by MEPs, experts, officials, human rights defenders, activists and media. The presentation of the People First! international campaign initiated by the Center for Civil Liberties and Memorial became one of the day’s key events.

The campaign’s goal is to make sure that the number one issue at future peace talks is the release of thousands of Ukrainian civilians unlawfully detained by Russia, war prisoners, thousands of deported children and hundreds of Russian political prisoners jailed for protesting against the war.

The campaign was presented by Mariana Katzarova, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation; Yevhen Zakharov, Director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Sergei Davidis, Co-Chair of the International Human Rights Defense Center Memorial; Hugues de Suremain, Legal Director, European Prison Litigation Network; and Nataliia Yashchuk, Senior War Consequences Officer at the Center for Civil Liberties.

The human rights defender spoke about enforced disappearances in the occupied territories, calling for investigating war crimes, prosecuting criminals, instituting a special tribunal for Putin, which would also accommodate the civil society’s vision of how to restore justice, and toughening sanctions and other international pressure on Russia.

“The crimes against civilians that we see now are crimes against humanity requiring a prompt response from us. We cannot stay on the sidelines while thousands of Ukrainian civilians and war prisoners are subjected to torture, unlawful imprisonment and humiliation. By the same token, there can be no real peace talks if people are not put in the first place”, Nataliia Yashchuk appealed to parliamentarians.

Also, as part of their Brussels programme, our colleagues from the Center for Civil Liberties attended the International Congress of Anti-War Initiatives. Mykhailo Savva, Doctor of Political Science and expert, addressed the Congress participants during the panel discussion “Countering Impunity: ICC, Universal Jurisdiction, Sanctions and Other Mechanisms” dedicated to effective mechanisms for prosecuting perpetrators of international crimes.

The human rights defender spoke about releasing unlawfully imprisoned Ukrainian non-combatants, i.e., civilians. He emphasised that, in order to persecute perpetrators, a special package of sanctions should be approved to target Russian officials and organisations responsible for unlawfully imprisoning non-combatants (Federal Penitentiary Service, Military Police under the Ministry of Defence and the Federal Security Service) and called on the international community to act in concert.

“To facilitate the release of people, we need our colleagues from other countries to help us find a State Party to the Convention against Torture willing to file a lawsuit against Russia with the UN International Court of Justice for the violation of this Convention. It can be a lawsuit filed jointly with Ukrainian human rights organisations and, possibly, with the Ukrainian authorities”, Mykhailo Savva proposed.

Ilya Nuzov, Eastern Europe and Central Asia Desk Director for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Karinna Moskalenko, President of the International Association of Russian Advocates, Maksimas Milta, Ukraine Country Director, the Reckoning Project, and Sergey Vasiliev, independent expert on international criminal law, also participated in the panel discussion.

The People First! advocacy campaign was also presented at the Congress as a separate event. Yevhen Zakharov, Director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Sergei Davidis, Co-Chair of the International Human Rights Defense Center Memorial; Hugues de Suremain, Legal Director, European Prison Litigation Network; and Anastasiia Holovnenko, Advocacy Campaigns Lead at the Center for Civil Liberties, participated in the presentation.

The human rights defender emphasised that this campaign was crucial, first and foremost, due to the fact that there were over 60,000 people, not including children, unlawfully detained by Russia. Anastasiia read out a long list of Ukrainian civil society organisations that have joined the campaign. She pointed out that these initiatives are led or even founded by people who have survived the Russian captivity or were forced to give up their civil professions and embrace human rights protection to defend their relatives still detained by Russia.

“You can see that this list of organisations is a very long one. Still, even longer is the list of people whom we all must release together. That’s why the first thing we all should associate with the People First! campaign is the enormous responsibility for the future of Ukrainians in the occupied territories, whom Russia has been abducting for eleven years”, Anastasiia Holovnenko stressed.

For more details on the advocacy campaign, please visit the website.