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impose onerous and intrusive public financial
reporting on NGOs whose annual budget
exceeded 300 times the so-called “living
minimum” – defined in law and regularly
reviewed, as UAH1,700 (USD63) at the end
of the year. NGOs were also required to
publicly report on all payments made to
members of staff or consultants. Non-
compliance carried severe penalties,
including the loss of the non-profit status and
freezing of accounts. The two draft laws were
under consideration in the Ukrainian
Parliament at the end of the year.
On 11 October, tax police raided the offices
of Patients of Ukraine, and the All-Ukrainian
Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS
(PLWH), two NGOs known for exposing
questionable schemes in the state medical
procurement system. The authorities alleged
that the NGOs had misused their
international funding – despite their having
passed independent financial audit – and,
according to court documents, accused them
of “supporting terrorism” by funding partner
patient organizations in Crimea.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
The investigations into the killings of
journalists Oles Buzina in 2015, and Pavel
Sheremet in 2016, had yielded no results.
The authorities continued their attempts to
limit the right to freedom of expression by
instigating trumped-up criminal cases against
journalists who criticized the government over
its failure to implement reforms and its
policies in eastern Ukraine. On 7 June, the
Supreme Special Court of Ukraine overturned
the July 2016 decision by a court of appeal to
acquit prisoner of conscience Ruslan
Kotsaba, a journalist who had been
prosecuted for treason and harming
Ukraine’s armed forces after he had criticized
the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
In June, the office of the online newspaper
Strana.ua was searched as part of an
investigation into an alleged disclosure of
state secrets, followed in August by searches
at the homes of its editor-in-chief Ihor Guzhva
and another journalist. In July, the office of
the media holding company Vesti was
searched in a fraud investigation. Both news
outlets were known for their critical reporting
on the Ukrainian authorities and their policies
in the conflict-affected Donbass region.
In three separate instances in August, the
SBU expelled four international journalists,
two Spanish and two Russian, for “harming
Ukraine’s national interests“ and barred them
from returning to Ukraine for three years. The
SBU spokesperson Olena Gitlyanska accused
the Russian journalist Anna Kurbatova,
expelled on 30 August, of producing material
“harmful to Ukraine’s national interest” and
warned that this would happen to everyone
“who dares to disgrace Ukraine”. In October,
the SBU lifted the ban on the Spanish
journalists entering Ukraine.
Also in August, the SBU arrested freelance
journalist Vasily Muravitsky from the city of
Zhytomyr. He had contributed to a number of
Russian media. The SBU accused him of
preparing and distributing “anti-Ukrainian”
materials on orders from Moscow. If
convicted, he could face up to 15 years in
jail. Vasily Muravitsky was in pre-trial
detention at the end of the year.
RIGHTS OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL,
TRANSGENDER AND INTERSEX PEOPLE
On 18 June, thousands joined the biggest
march yet of Equality, the annual LGBTI
Pride demonstration, in Kyiv, as well as
several dozen counter-protests. Police
provided effective protection from those
protesting against the march and no
incidents were reported during the rally. After
the march, members of far-right groups
attacked and beat several participants.
Overall, the number of violent attacks against
LGBTI people rose in 2017. In September, a
group of right-wing protesters severely beat a
number of participants of an LGBTI festival in
the city of Zapporizhhya.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS
Parliament had still not ratified the Council of
Europe Convention on preventing and
combating violence against women and
domestic violence (Istanbul Convention),
which it signed in 2011.
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CRIMEA
The clampdown on the rights to freedom of
expression, association and assembly
continued in Crimea. The authorities
continued to predominantly target ethnic
Crimean Tatars. The arbitrary ban on the
Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, a self-
governing body representing the ethnic
Crimean Tatars, continued. The Russian
Security Services raided dozens of Crimean
Tatar homes, purportedly looking for illegal
weapons, drugs or “extremist” literature, as
part of their campaign to intimidate critics of
the peninsula’s occupation. The few lawyers
willing to take up cases in defence of critical
voices in Crimea faced harassment by the
Russian authorities.
On 26 January, lawyer Emil Kurbedinov was
arrested and sentenced by a de facto court in
the Crimean capital, Simferopol, to 10 days of
administrative detention. He was accused of
violating Russian anti-extremist legislation
with a social media post predating the
Russian occupation of Crimea. In the post,
he had shared a video about a protest held
by the Muslim organization Hizb ut-Tahrir,
which is banned in Russia but not in
Ukraine. On 8 August, police in Simferopol
used excessive force and arrested Server
Karametov for holding a placard outside the
Crimean Supreme Court to protest at
reprisals against Crimean Tatars. He was
sentenced to 10 days in prison. On 22
September, Ukrainian journalist Mykola
Semena was convicted for “threatening [the]
territorial integrity of the Russian Federation”
in his publications and given a two-and-a-
half-year conditional sentence and a three-
year ban on participating in “public
activities”. In September, Crimean Tatar
leaders Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov
were given jail terms for their peaceful
activism. On 25 October, both were flown to
Turkey and released, without an official
explanation. Akhtem Chiygoz had spent 34
months in detention, and Ilmi Umerov had
been forcibly held in a psychiatric institution
since August or September 2016. Both were
prisoners of conscience.
ARMS TRADE
On 28 September, the Secretary of the
National Security and Defence Council,
Oleksandr Turchinov, announced that
Ukrainian state companies had decided to
freeze arms transfers to South Sudan. The
announcement came days after Amnesty
International published a report which
included contract documents and end-user
certificates listing the Ukrainian state-owned
arms exporter Ukrinmash as the prospective
supplier of USD169 million worth of small
arms and light weapons to the South
Sudanese Ministry of Defence.
2
In response
to the report, the State Service of Export
Control issued a statement saying that the
contract in question had not been executed,
and that no weapons had been shipped from
Ukraine to South Sudan. In previous years,
Ukraine had consistently reported exports of
small arms, light weapons and major
weapons to the government of South Sudan.
Ukraine had not yet ratified the Arms Trade
Treaty, which it signed in September 2014.
1. Put an end to impunity for detention-related abuses in the context of
the armed conflict in Ukraine (
EUR 50/5558/2017
)
2. From London to Juba, a UK-registered company’s role in one of the
largest arms deals to South Sudan (
ACT 30/7115/2017
)
UNITED ARAB
EMIRATES
United Arab Emirates
Head of state: Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Head of government: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed Al
Maktoum
The authorities continued to arbitrarily
restrict freedoms of expression and
association, using criminal defamation and
anti-terrorism laws to detain, prosecute,
convict and imprison government critics
and a prominent human rights defender.
Scores of people, including prisoners of
conscience, who were sentenced following
unfair trials remained in prison. Authorities
held detainees in conditions that could