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Amnesty International Report 2017/18

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 

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