EuroMaidan in the Black Sea resort city of Odesa has turned tragic. On Nov. 25, local police destroyed the camp in the city center and detained some activists. One of them, Oleksiy Chornyy, the leader of the Odesa branch of pro-European party Democratic Alliance, says he was heavily beaten and poisoned by tear gas police. There’s almost no information about two detained activists, however.
The EuroMaidan camp in Odesa was raided by police at 5 a.m. on Nov. 25, local activist Viktoria Sibir told the Kyiv Post. However, the police were not
satisfied with the tents’ destruction. Three rally participants – Vitaliy Ustymenko,
Slava Shkriblyak and Chornyy – were detained by police.
On the way to the police department, Chornyy allegedly that he was beaten by police, he
wrote in a claim to Odesa prosecutor Gennadiy Furtat. “I was beaten with a
baton in a paddy wagon, was beaten in the stomach on the floor,” Chornyy wrote. He was taken to the court, but then disappeared. More than
five hours later, his relatives and colleagues still have not seen him. The whereabouts of Shkriblyak is also unknown.
Odesa police, however, say no participants were beaten during or after
the rally.
According to a police press statement, the rally was banned, but in spite
of that protesters gathered near the monument to Duke Richelieu. When three
activists tried to resist the destruction of the camp, they were taken to
police station, officials say. “No measures of physical exposure to the
protesters were used,” press release says.
At 5 p.m, the trial in the case of EuroMaidan activists started, EuroMaidan
participant Vera Gruzova wrote on her Facebook page. It is still unknown, however, if
all three activists are inside the court building, though. Odesa activists plan
to meet at the same place today at 6 p.m. to demand freedom for the detainees and to call on President Viktor Yanukovych to sign the association agreement with the European Union later this week in Vilnius, Lithuania, something the president on Nov. 21 decided he was not ready to do.
Kyiv Post staff writer Kateryna Kapliuk can be reached at [email protected].
