Infant – victim of inhumane treatment
In the latest application to the European Court of Human Rights against Ukraine concerning torture and inhumane treatment, which was prepared by lawyers of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG), a 5-month-old infant, S., and his 22-year-old mother, K., are suing the state.
Both before the birth of the child and after, K. was held in a SIZO in horrific conditions; while staying in the maternity hospital, the convoy constantly handcuffed her hands and feet. S. was not examined by doctors, and the child did not receive medical assistance.
Pregnant – to the SIZO
In mid-January 2012, police officers brought a young woman, K., who was five months pregnant, from her home to one of the district offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. One of the police officers beat her, smashing her face against a sink in the toilet, and a forensic medical examination recorded bodily injuries on the girl's face and legs. She called her mother, who, in turn, reported this incident to the prosecutor's office. Prosecutors arrived at the district station to check the circumstances of the incident and seized K.'s blood-stained jacket. On the same day, K. was detained by an investigator on suspicion of committing a group robbery attack and was taken to the temporary detention facility. On the third day, the court ordered her detention, and she was transferred to the pre-trial detention centre.
In the SIZO, she was placed in a general, overcrowded cell where 30 women were held, who, due to a shortage of beds, slept either in turns, or two in one bed, and sometimes even on the floor. K. slept with another inmate. Approximately in the eighth month of pregnancy, K. was transferred to a cell in which, in addition to her, there was another pregnant HIV-positive woman and a minor girl.
At the maternity hospital
When labour began, K. was taken by convoy to the maternity hospital. Initially, three female guards handcuffed K. to the bed by her hands and feet, but later, at her request, they freed her hands and feet. The labour was difficult, lasting seven hours; K. had tears, so she was stitched up. Pain relief was provided only with no-spa, which K.'s mother had passed on. The guards were present during the birth and, according to K., held her by the hands and feet in the delivery chair, and when she screamed loudly, they covered her mouth.
The woman gave birth to a boy, S., and she was transferred to a separate ward. In the ward, the female guards immediately handcuffed her hands and feet to the bed again and went to sleep. When K. needed to feed the child, she would wake the guards, and they would free her hands. Despite the doctors' conclusion about the need to keep her in the maternity hospital until her wounds healed, at the demand of the SIZO, she was discharged on the third day. Before being discharged, K. was taken for fluorography in handcuffs on her hands and feet to a hospital in a neighbouring building next to the maternity hospital, in the sight of passers-by and hospital visitors. At the same time, K. was in a condition where even the slightest step caused her severe pain.
Back in the SIZO
The mother and child were placed in the same SIZO cell together with another woman who had also given birth to a child, and with a minor prisoner.
On the fourth day after returning to the SIZO, the boy was examined by a district paediatrician. The infant was found to have 'physiological phimosis', so the boy had problems with urination. As a result of the illness, the child had constant inflammation of the foreskin. He was irritable, cried, and slept poorly. K., according to her, repeatedly appealed verbally to the SIZO administration with a petition for the examination and treatment of her son, however, there was no reaction to her appeals.
The cell is located in a basement room with small windows under the ceiling; almost no sunlight reaches it. The cell had high humidity, fungus on the walls and floor, poor artificial lighting, no hot water, and cold water was supplied from time to time. In the cell, there was an electric stove in faulty condition, the use of which resulted in noticeable electric shocks. To wash the infants, the women asked the guards to bring hot water in a bucket. When they were refused, they had to use the faulty electric stove. Walks with the child were provided once a day; they were extremely short (usually up to 20 minutes) and were carried out, with rare exceptions, in the so-called 'pit' – a tiny courtyard with concrete walls contaminated with human excrement, with a roof in the form of a metal mesh and a guard on top. The special nutrition intended for mothers nursing infants with their own milk, in practice, consisted of a glass of white liquid, which was very far from milk, and a small piece of a substance that was supposed to be butter.
When K. was taken to court with the baby, she was given a glass of tea and a little bread in the morning. At the time, the dry food ration provided by legislation was not provided to her in court, and K. missed lunch and dinner at the SIZO, so on the day of the court hearing, she received almost no nutrition from the SIZO. All this time, she survived and did not lose the ability to feed the child only thanks to numerous food parcels from her mother.
In the courtroom, K. was held with the baby in a cage for defendants, and when she was speaking to the court while standing, the boy lay on the bench for defendants. When K. appealed to the judge with a petition not to hold her with the child in the cage, he refused, citing a ban by the convoy. An innocent infant was in a cage for criminals.
Mother K. was extremely depressed by these circumstances. Everyone else, it seems, was not even surprised by this Kafkaesque situation.
Defence
The lawyer of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG), having seen the infant in the cage, was horrified and rushed to the defence of the mother and child. At that moment, S. was already three months old.
K. appealed to the court with a petition for the examination of her son and the provision of regular observation by a paediatrician, the provision of proper conditions for her and the child's detention, appropriate nutrition for her as a nursing mother, and a medical examination of her cellmates for the presence of infectious diseases. The court refused to satisfy this petition, referring to the presence in the case file of a doctor's certificate about a recent examination of the child, according to which the boy's condition is satisfactory, and he can be held in the SIZO. K. maintained that no doctors had examined the boy in the SIZO, except for the examination immediately after birth.
The medical unit of the SIZO does not have a paediatrician on staff, so the infant was under medical supervision at the regional children's hospital. According to the data from this hospital, the paediatrician visited him only once in four months, after his transfer from the maternity hospital. Instead, in response to the lawyer's request, the SIZO claimed that the paediatrician visited the child every month.
Having collected the necessary data, KHPG lawyers sent an application to the European Court of Human Rights regarding the application of Rule 39 of the Rules of the Court concerning urgent measures: ensuring proper conditions for the child's detention and proper medical care. However, the Court demanded additional data from us and from the state to confirm the stated facts. And only on the 43rd day after the application was submitted did the Court apply Rule 39 and address the government of Ukraine with requirements regarding the conditions of detention for a mother with an infant, medical supervision, and medical assistance. The Court set a requirement for KHPG lawyers to urgently prepare an application regarding the state's violation of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to K. and S.
Reaction
Soon, S. was examined in one day by a dermatologist, cardiologist, surgeon, otolaryngologist, neurologist, and paediatrician. The boy was diagnosed with 'dysplastic cardiopathy PFO? I99', which requires additional examinations, as well as a diagnosis of 'allergic dermatitis'; K. was recommended a special diet. The mother and child were transferred to another cell, which, in fact, is intended for holding women with children in the SIZO (What prevented them from placing her there immediately?! It is incomprehensible!).
At the very first court hearing after the application of Rule 39, K. appealed with a petition for release from custody, and the court applied an undertaking not to leave. K. and the boy are at home. Even earlier, KHPG lawyers had sent an application to the Court regarding Ukraine's violation of Article 3 of the European Convention concerning the inadequate conditions of keeping a mother with a child in the SIZO.
At the same time, in response to the lawyer's request, the SIZO sent a statement by K., in which it speaks of good conditions of detention in the SIZO, the maternity hospital, and the medical assistance provided. Attached to the response were photographs of wonderful cells and a courtyard for walks for mothers with children. As K. reported, such a courtyard does indeed exist in the SIZO, but walks for her and the other woman with the child there were almost non-existent.
Since K. had repeatedly spoken about very poor conditions of detention in the SIZO and the absence of medical assistance before that, it was necessary to find out what caused such a change in her assessments. It turned out that the information about the wonderful conditions of her and her child's detention in the SIZO was written by K. under dictation due to psychological pressure from SIZO staff, one of whom threatened her that if she refused to write such a text, she and her child would have problems.
In recent days, the European Court has sent additional questions to be answered in communication with the government of Ukraine, and we are awaiting the state's objections to our application. Never before has the Court initiated communication with a government without actually having an application about a violation of the Convention yet. Even in the high-profile cases of former government officials Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko, communication with the government began several months after receiving the application.
What other barbaric actions must occur so that the order according to which those deprived of liberty are handcuffed to beds in civilian hospitals is finally changed? The European Court of Human Rights has already repeatedly qualified this as inhumane treatment and a violation of Article 3. Such staggering cruelty towards women during and after childbirth resembles the times of the Inquisition. What more is needed to change the attitude of SIZO staff towards pregnant women, whose guilt, by the way, has not yet been proven in court, and innocent infants born in captivity?!
Yevhen Zakharov – Chair of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group