Beatings at the Kirovohrad pre-trial detention centre

The mother of the young man beaten in the Kirovohrad pre-trial detention centre: Doctors give no guarantee that my son will survive

In the intensive care unit of the Municipal Clinical Hospital No. 1 in Kirovohrad, 22-year-old Anatoliy Levchun is dying after being brutally beaten in the Kirovohrad pre-trial detention centre. The hospital management has forbidden his mother and relatives, who have seen the signs of the beating, from photographing the body of her still-living son!
29 May 2009
Citizen of Ukraine Anatoliy Levchun, born in 1987, was placed in the Kirovohrad pre-trial detention centre of the State Department of Ukraine for the Execution of Sentences (Kirovohrad, Kuropyatnykova St., 50, head of the detention centre Serhiy Ivanovych Botuzov, tel. (052) 224-78-77) in a satisfactory condition on 8 April 2009. Today, Anatoliy Levchun is in a critical, unconscious state in the intensive care unit of the infectious diseases ward of the Municipal Clinical Hospital No. 1 in Kirovohrad.

Anatoliy’s mother, Ms Nataliya Anatoliivna (80982244477), received her son yesterday on a stretcher; his entire body was covered in fresh bruises and dried blood, and there was a massive pressure sore on his back, indicating that Anatoliy had not been able to stand or be moved for at least 10 days. This is despite the fact that, according to the pre-trial detention centre staff, the deterioration in Mr Levchun’s health occurred only a few days before his release.

As sources in Kirovohrad’s medical circles unofficially informed the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, Mr Levchun’s chances of survival remain slim, while at the same time ‘certain civil servants are exerting incredible pressure on the hospital management’ with the aim of preventing, by any means, the proper documentation of the traces of torture on the patient’s body. The hospital’s head physician categorically forbade the mother, who is Mr Levchun’s legal representative, from taking photographs or video footage of her son in his hospital room.

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group has reasonable grounds to suspect that Mr Levchun was subjected to treatment in the Kirovohrad pre-trial detention centre that meets the definition of torture within the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

We are convinced that the Prosecutor’s Office of the Kirovohrad region, which has already demonstrated a lack of will and professionalism when it sabotaged the conduct of an effective investigation into reports of mass beatings of detainees in the Znamianka temporary detention facility in the Kirovohrad region in December 2008, will not fairly and impartially investigate the reports of possible torture of citizen Levchun this time either. Therefore, we are forced to appeal directly to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Nina Ivanivna Karpachova, with a request to immediately send representatives of the Commissioner’s Secretariat to Kirovohrad to properly document the report of torture against citizen Levchun.

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group appeals to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine with a demand to immediately ensure that Mr Levchun’s lawyer and his mother are given the opportunity to photograph and film patient Levchun, who is in the intensive care unit of the Municipal Clinical Hospital No. 1 in Kirovohrad, and to ensure he is examined by a commission consisting of a surgeon, a neurosurgeon, and a traumatologist. We call on the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to urgently send a commission to Kirovohrad to study the condition and quality of medical care provided at the Kirovohrad pre-trial detention centre.

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group calls on all concerned journalists in Ukraine to cover reports of torture in the institutions of Ukraine’s prison system. We ask journalists to contact Mr Levchun’s mother – Nataliya Anatoliivna (80982244477) – to obtain updated information.

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group declares that it will continue to use all technically possible means to obtain and disseminate information to the public regarding the state of human rights compliance in the institutions of the penal system.

Volodymyr Bocharov-Tuz, a representative of the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in the Kirovohrad region, commented on this situation for the website ‘All Kirovohrad’.

According to him, Ukraine is currently preparing for a visit by representatives of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, and cases of inhumane torture of convicts are occurring all over the country. Thus, in the opinion of representatives of public and human rights organisations, the intimidation of convicts is taking place in various institutions, as the committee representatives do not warn in advance which colony they will visit to investigate the situation regarding torture. Kirovohrad, in this way, is once again exposing itself in a very poor light – as a region where basic human rights and freedoms are violated, in particular, the freedom from torture and inhumane treatment.

‘At the moment, we have not received confirmation of the torture of Anatoliy Levchun, but even the trends observed in Ukraine point to a worsening of the situation regarding the protection of the rights of convicts in our state,’ noted Volodymyr Bocharov-Tuz.

Let us recall that the European Commission has already noted the existence of reports from Ukraine about torture in prisons. This is stated in the report on Ukraine’s progress in implementing the Action Plan within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy, which was presented today.

‘Torture and ill-treatment during police detentions are the subject of frequent reports, although to a slightly lesser extent than in the past,’ the report notes. At the same time, the European Commission emphasises that poor conditions of detention remain a cause for concern.

The document also draws attention to the fact that the transfer of penitentiary institutions from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice, with the aim of strengthening civil control, has still not been completed.

Correspondents from ‘All Kirovohrad’ managed to contact the mother, Nataliya Levchun; she notes that the doctors’ prognosis is not encouraging. ‘In the evening, the doctors say they cannot give any guarantee that my child will live until the morning, and then in the morning, there are again no guarantees that he will survive the day,’ notes Nataliya Anatoliivna, a resident of Svitlovodsk, Kirovohrad region. She does not yet want to discuss why her son Anatoliy ended up in the Kirovohrad pre-trial detention centre, but she is arriving in Kirovohrad tomorrow to visit her son in the hospital and has promised to meet with our correspondent.