The president of Freedom House, an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, David Kramer, has said that the criminal prosecution of Ukraine's ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko has to stop if Ukraine wants to maintain credibility and to fight corruption.
"There is no credibility to these investigations anymore. It is just one charge after another against Yulia Tymoshenko until something sticks," the press service of the Batkivschyna Party quoted Kramer as saying at a conference entitled "Ukraine’s Future: The Challenges and Impact of Governance in Ukraine" co-hosted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, and the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC.
The Freedom House president said, addressing members of the Ukrainian government who were present at the conference: "When you go back or report back to your government, tell them to stop.
This is outrageous! It is destroying Ukraine’s prospects for real integration into the Euro-Atlantic community, and it is destroying your country’s prospects for a real democratic future," he said.
Kramer also noted that the prosecution of the opposition members in Ukraine was destroying the achievements of the Orange Revolution of 2004.
"I’ve taken recently to wearing a bracelet for Belarus, another country I follow very closely, and this bracelet is "FreeBelarusnow.org." I certainly hope that we do not have to start wearing the same [kind of] bracelet for Ukraine," he said.
