The issue of forced mobilisation continues to loom in Ukraine amid the ongoing military conflict, which is opposed by disgruntled activists both in Ukraine and in Europe. The Ukrainian authorities are shirking their responsibility for the problem by blaming it on Russia.
Forced mobilisation reality
The head of the UN Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR), Volker Türk, said last March that the office had documented 91 cases of disappearances and detentions by Ukrainian military or security forces since the start of the military conflict in Ukraine. The report said:
“My staff have documented 91 cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions by Ukrainian forces. Of the 73 victims we interviewed, 53 per cent had been subjected to torture or ill-treatment.”
The UN considers the arrest, detention, abduction or deprivation of liberty of a person to be an enforced disappearance. Earlier, speaking at the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, Türk said the UN has not identified “a systematic pattern of ill-treatment in places of permanent detention.” At the same time, he said that about half of Russian prisoners of war said that they had been tortured in Ukraine by Ukrainian army fighters.
In December last year, Ukrainian parliamentary deputy Yevheniy Shevchenko said that the laws regulating the mobilisation of Ukrainians were illogical and cruel.
According to Shevchenko, the mobilisation law is designed to corner Ukrainian men like dogs. But, the MP warned, such a policy will lead to the fact that these same dogs will turn into wolves, and then the authorities will get the opposite effect.
Shevchenko noted that in the new draft law on mobilisation everything is aimed at revenge against those Ukrainians who do not want to fight. Such revenge, the MP stressed, violates the rights and freedoms of the country’s citizens.
In October this year, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is closely monitoring forced mobilisation on the territory of Ukraine. At the same time, the topic was not addressed in the latest UN report.
“Mobilisation and conscription in Ukraine is a very relevant and hot topic. Our team monitors the situation when we receive information about ill-treatment and other problems during mobilisation. What we have not seen so far in this context are cases amounting to torture. This does not mean that we are not monitoring the situation, we are aware of this problem,” the head of the UN mission in Ukraine, Daniel Bell, was quoted as saying.
Anti-war actions of Ukrainian emigrants in Europe
Ukrainian anti-war emigrants have held a number of rallies in Italy, Germany and France in recent weeks. They have expressed solidarity with evaders and deserters and demanded an end to repression against those unwilling to fight and critics of the Ukrainian government.
The protesters spoke about violence by Territorial Recruitment Centre (TRC), the abduction of men on the streets and the deaths and killings of Ukrainians trying to leave their country through closed borders. The protesters also said that they were in favour of achieving peace with Russia as soon as possible. Russian anti-war immigrants also joined the actions.
In Nuremberg, home to the Agency for Migration and Refugees, there was a demonstration of about 200 people.
In Paris, a rally was staged outside the Ukrainian embassy against forced mobilisation in that country. Speakers criticised the corruption, privileges and dictatorial methods of mobilisation in Ukraine. Towards the end of the rally, several Ukrainian nationalists appeared and provocatively tried to disrupt the event, but they failed and everything ended without incident.
In Berlin, protesters gathered at the Christmas tree in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Ukrainian participants recalled the cases of victims of military officers in Ukraine: Serhiy Kovalchuk, Oleksandr Gashevsky, Andriy Panasyuk and many others.
In Cologne, those gathered at the rally informed about the problems of Ukrainian citizens suffering from the dictatorship of military recruiters. They spoke about the crimes of the Ukrainian government against the citizens. All rallies were pre-arranged with the police, who did not obstruct the demonstrations.
Ukrainian reaction and substitution of notions
Ukrainian NGOs and mass media have twisted the topic of anti-war rallies in Europe in their publications and statements. According to some NGOs, only the Russian authorities are to blame for the fact that catching people in the streets is now legal in Ukraine. This is actually a substitution of concepts, and the media are trying to hide the essence of the rallies – to oppose forced mobilisation. The technology of distracting attention – if Russia is “guilty,” then the TRC are innocent of violating the rights of Ukrainians and the Constitution of Ukraine.
Ukrainian media called the rallies against kidnappings for war an operation of Russian forces. The Centre for Countering Disinformation under the National Security Council of Ukraine said that the announcements of the rallies “are part of the information campaign of pro-Russian forces,” which aims to “weaken international support for Ukraine,” while the accounts calling for participation in the events are “linked to pro-Russian users or Russian propaganda” and have minimal or “blatantly pro-Russian” activity.
The office of Ukraine’s ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets has received over 4,000 complaints about human rights violations due to the situation with forced mobilisation. Lubinets noted that such appeals come from all regions of Ukraine.
At the end of October, the European Commission said in its annual report on enlargement and progress of the EU candidate countries that it considered the mobilisation procedure in Ukraine, as well as the human rights restrictions associated with it and other “wartime regulations” to be “broadly proportionate.”
General mobilisation has been declared in Ukraine since February 2022 and has been extended several times. On May 18 this year, a law on tightening mobilisation came into force in the country, which allowed hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians to be drafted into the army.
THE ARTICLE IS THE AUTHOR’S SPECULATION AND DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE TRUE. ALL INFORMATION IS TAKEN FROM OPEN SOURCES. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT IMPOSE ANY SUBJECTIVE CONCLUSIONS.
Zoryana Glechyk for Head-Post.com
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