Every journalist can help punish Russian war criminals
You don’t have to be investigators to help punish the perpetrators. The crimes of the occupier are documented by human rights defenders, they will need the data you collected. Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, told Detector Media about how journalists can help document Russia’s war crimes.
The “Tribunal for Putin” initiative documented more than five thousand war crimes since the beginning of the new wave of russian aggression. Human rights activists set an ambitious goal: to reproduce the crimes of the russians in Ukraine daily: from the capital to a village, to provide law enforcement with information for investigations. They focused on serious crime types: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression.
“Journalists called in to help because the efforts of human rights activists and law enforcement are not enough to cover all the crimes,” said Oleksandra Matviychuk, chairman of the Civil Liberties Center and co-founder of the “Tribunal for Putin” initiative. According to her, each case may include several crimes: a missile hitting a civilian object is one thing, but its consequences: the destruction of property, wounded and dead enters into the database as separate crimes.
Journalists get the information human rights activists to need every day, so they can help. “Journalists work with war crimes to tell the public the truth. We gather information, too, but in a way that makes it the basis for prosecuting war criminals in the courts. The goals are different, but the points of intersection are the same,” – Oleksandra Matviychuk explained.
“Now human rights defenders are at the first stage of documentation – the collection of information. It is necessary to work cohesively and quickly because time plays against the establishment of justice,” – said the human rights defender.“ “The court is not God, it is an evidentiary procedure. In his decision, the judge makes only what has been proven in court. If a person is right, but there is no evidence, he loses. That’s why the evidence-gathering phase is necessary,” – she added.
Throughout the second stage – during the investigation – the specialists analyze the information that has been collected, build cases, make connections between the events and build up legal positions. They browse the materials and filter out those, which will be suitable for national investigations; those, which will be suitable for the International Criminal Court (investigation into several particular episodes) or for the European court of human rights, which, until the 16th of September, has jurisdiction over Russia, as was explained by Oleksandra Matviychuk. Assistance from journalists may be required during both the first and second stages.
Human rights defenders suggest that the journalists take five steps towards cooperation. These steps are ordered according to their priority, which means the first step is crucial.
Step one: contacts of the victims /witnesses of war crimes, who gave their permission to disclose their personal details, are to be shared with the human rights defenders. This type of agreement may be recorded in different ways, says Oleksandra Matviychuk. Documentators in their turn, record the person’s consent on video, and for International courts, this consent must comply with certain clear standards.
At first, potential witnesses and victims are interviewed by the volunteers of “Euromaidan SOS” initiative. We are being asked: “Why are you collecting these interviews? They are not being forwarded directly to the International criminal court.” In fact, we are screening in order to detect an illness. We literally ask a few questions. This simplified method allows us to gather a large number of stories and contacts promptly enough, and, if need be, to conduct a further, more detailed interview, so as to avoid tormenting this person for hours asking the same questions twice,” Oleksandra Matviychuk explains.
The second, more detailed interview is conducted by the human rights defenders. “The journalists need 10 seconds for the sync, which is enough for them. But we need more time for presenting the case. It is not difficult for the journalists to ask if the person agrees to speak to the human rights defenders and to ask permission to share contacts. Then the details are sent via email and that’s it, after we connect with people and come to an agreement,” Oleksandra adds.
It is the same with the second step: the journalists share photos and videos, which possibly contain information about war crimes. “We do not aim to get all the journalists involved in the investigation as to which photos and videos will assist in court. All we do is ask to share them with us,” the human rights defender adds.
The materials will be useful, even if they do not become evidence, emphasizes Oleksandra: they can help to reproduce the picture of events, make connections between them and form a legal position. That is, even if the witness remembered that the perpetrator was wearing blue pants, but it was not recorded properly to be evidence, it could still give a clue to the investigators, she explained. Along with the materials, a warning can be given if they are: for example, not for publication, only for internal use for the purposes of the investigation.
“In some cases, we can offer legal assistance to a person. For example, in Kyiv region, a man said that he was forced to take blood for wounded Russian soldiers. We had no confirmation of such a crime until now. This is another facet of evil for us, which has a legal qualification. Therefore, we are interested in moving forward, and journalists may have a lot of such details,” Oleksandra said.
Step three — transfer to human rights defenders the results of journalistic investigations and documents collected for these purposes, audio or video recordings and other information that helps to identify war criminals or testifies to their crimes. Oleksandra Matviichuk gave a well-known example: the Scheme project team identified the Russian soldier and his wife, whose conversation about the permission to rape Ukrainian women was intercepted by the Ukrainian Security Service. Such work is also very important for documentaries, the human rights activist said.
The initiative is ready for the preparation of joint products with journalists (including investigations), and will also consider all ideas and proposals — these are the fourth and fifth steps that are expected from the media in the “Tribunal for Putin”.
Human rights defenders monitor media publications, but due to the insane pace they are not always able to do this, so they ask journalists to apply directly to “not to search for a mention in tons of materials for two sentences or ten seconds of the desired synchrony“, emphasized Oleksandra Matviichuk. “Journalists also have a huge flow. A few days will pass and they won’t remember, they won’t recreate the contacts. Therefore, it is important to establish a system when we interact promptly immediately after the event,” she said.
To help journalists better understand what information will help human rights defenders, the initiative is conducting one-and-a-half-hour online trainings. They explain what documentation is, teach to distinguish war crimes from military ones, give practical advice – how to communicate with victims, how to ask permission to transfer personal data, how to shoot materials so that they become part of the documentation, etc.
Journalists are also told the difference between the International Criminal Court, the UN Human Rights Council, the OSCE Moscow Mechanism, and why national jurisdiction is important, not just international courts. They also send material with advice on how to communicate with victims; it is used by both documentaries and journalists. During the training, participants analyze specific examples. Human rights activists explained, for example, that when the occupiers in the Kyiv region stood in a geriatric boarding house and did not release patients, it was a war crime, because people were used as human shields, said Oleksandra Matviychuk. “Perhaps a journalist would not have paid attention to this before and would not have written. And now he understands why it is important,” she added.
Another example, the human rights activist says, is the detention of Victoria Obidina, who was separated from her four-year-old daughter and sent to a filtration camp. “Everyone wrote that she was a military medic, but only later did the materials clarify that military medics are not combatants, that is, they are not considered soldiers (like priests). Like one phrase, but it radically changes everything. To understand, a journalist needs to take a separate comment, but for this you need to understand that comment is needed,” she said. To understand the nuances, Olexandra advises journalists to read the comments of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The trainings were tested with journalists of the Public, but human rights activists are ready to hold them for any editorial office. “There are things that require a certain qualification, knowledge and years of work. But basic understanding can be gained, and this is what the training is designed for,” said Oleksandra Matviychuk. According to her, this is a productive way of cooperation, as journalists get acquainted not only with the topic, but also with human rights activists themselves, have the opportunity to ask questions or ask for comments later.
There are already positive stories of cooperation with journalists, Oleksandra said. Human rights activists were interested in the material sent to her personally by the journalist. Now it is a question of this case would being conducted by lawyers from abroad who have volunteered to help for free. Journalists from the occupied territories are also appealing, she added. “We want such individual stories to grow into a permanent collaboration, but for that we need to strengthen ties. Now it is built more on personal connections. Our task is to build a system,” said Oleksandra Matviychuk.
In addition to the obvious common task of gathering evidence and finding the perpetrators to punish, there is one more thing. “It is equally important to prevent the commission of new war crimes and the emergence of new victims. That is why the work of journalists is important, including publications about what is happening now. After all, the international community is now deciding whether to support Ukraine, impose sanctions or provide weapons. Justice is always postponed, and international justice is even more. And people are dying, they are being tortured, people are suffering right now,” the human rights defender summed up.
