You're reading: Another Euro 2012 challenge: How to stop police brutality

Ukrainian police might be dangerous not only for those living in Ukraine, but for sports fans who will come for the Euro 2012 soccer championship, human rights group Amnesty International is warning.

Amnesty said authorities all but ignored the findings of its scathing report on Ukrainian police torture and abuses on Oct. 12.

The organization hasn’t let go of the issue, however, and is now urging Ukraine to change its “notoriously corrupt police force” ahead of Euro 2012, which Ukraine co-hosts next summer with Poland.

“Every day Ukrainians are paying the price for their government’s reluctance to reform the police.

With thousands of international fans converging on Ukraine in summer 2012, there is a danger that they too may suffer at the hands of a police force with no concept of public service or accountability,” said John Dalhuisen, deputy director for Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Program, last month.

Amnesty’s report raised horrifying cases of police using electric shocks and wires, beatings, suffocating suspects with belts and plastic bags.

Extortion remains common and police still try to keep up with the Soviet practice of ensuring high percentage of crimes are solved, even if it means that innocent people are convicted, the report found.

One of the most famous cases involves the May 18, 2010, death of 20-year-old student Igor Indylo whie in police custody of severe head trauma andn other injuries inconsistent with the police explanation that he fell.

The Interior Ministry did not comment on the report. “There are many cases described there and we did not analyze all of them,” a spokesman for the ministry said. The ministry did not respond to questions about specific cases.

More than a third of sex workers reported being forced to perform sexual services for police.

According to official data, 354 criminal cases were open in the first half of 2011 against police officers who allegedly used illegal methods during interrogation and investigation.

However, the ministry did not respond to a question about the progress of the cases.

On Dec.17, two police officers prosecuted for allegedly torturing detainees were set free.

According to police spokesman Volodymyr Polishchuk, the decision was made by the Kyiv prosecutor: “It is not that they are such big criminals to remain in pretrial prison,” said Polishchuk.

Another international organization, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine, released a new study on Dec. 16 that showed that police officers were the cause of physical and mental abuse of sex workers in 23 percent of the cases.

More than a third of sex workers reported being forced to perform sexual services for police.

The Alliance’s report was based on a series of 300 interviews with sex workers across the nation, 42 interviews with their employers and mediators and 38 non-governmental organizations.

Amnesty said perhaps hundreds of thousands of people have suffered ill-treatment from police, but fear filing complaints. Many who complain are either threatened or detained and tortured again.

Nina Karpachova, parliament’s representative on human rights, says she gets 5,000 complaints annually regarding violations of human rights by police. Most complaints are for unlawful detentions, ill treatment during investigation, torture and horrifying conditions in prisons.

The Amnesty report states that police are rarely held accountable for their actions, since they often have close ties with prosecutors.

In October, Amnesty International called on the Ukrainian authorities to make clear to their subordinates that police abuse will be subject to criminal investigation.

It has also recommended that an independent agency be set up to effectively investigate complaints against the police.

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]