Illegal armed groups in Ukraine's east are abducting civilians for ransom, exchange or for using them as work force, torturing or killing their prisoners, UN Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic has said.
Since April 2014, about 924 people have been kidnapped by illegal armed groups, of whom 811 were involved in political activities, Simonovic said at the UN Security Council when announcing the report of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine.
According to him, militants kidnapped 46 journalists, 112 police officers, 91 soldiers and border guards, 26 representatives of the OSCE, 22 people’s deputies, members of political parties and heads of local councils. The fate of 375 people remains unknown.
The report says that terrorists use civilians as “human shields.” Representatives of the UN mission documented individual cases of using children as hostages, in particular orphans and disabled children, by terrorists.
The UN mission confirmed that there were Russian citizens among the leaders of illegal armed formations of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, who had experience of military conflicts in Chechnya and Transdniestria.
The report also indicates that Russia violates rights of Ukrainian citizen Nadia Savchenko, who was kidnapped in Luhansk region, illegally brought to Russia and taken into custody on the Russian territory.
