Parliament’s new commissioner for human rights, Valeriya Lutkovska, says she is committed to doing a better job than her predecessor, Nina Karpachova, who served for 14 years and faced criticism that she was partisan for the pro-presidential Party of Regions.
But Lutkovska is also viewed with suspicion by the opposition since she was elected by the Party of Regions and Communist Party members. Lutkovska will have to prove her independence and commitment to improving Ukraine’s tattered international standing on human rights.
So far, she has little to say.
She takes over amid an international wave of criticism over the imprisonment of political opposition figures, including ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Ex-human rights commissioner Karpachova released publicly pictures that show bruises on Tymoshenko’s body. The imprisoned ex-premier said the marks came from prison guards who roughed her up while forcibly transferring her from a Kharkiv prison to hospital in April.
According to opposition lawmakers from Tymoshenko’s BYuT faction, Karpachova fled the country for fear of being prosecuted after losing the legal immunity she enjoyed as human rights commissioner. Prosecutors deny exerting any pressure against her.
Most recently Lutkovska was Ukraine’s representative in the European Court of Human Rights, defending the government’s position in Strasbourg. Now her task for the next five years could be the opposite – defending Ukrainian citizens against government abuses. “There is no moral dilemma here,” she said during a May 15 interview to the Kyiv Post.
She represented Ukraine’s government in the European Court for Human Rights in April in the case of Ukraine’s former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, who was arrested in December 2010 and sentenced in February to four years in prison on abuse of office charges. While Lutsenko and his allies in the opposition called the arrest illegal, she was defending the government’s position that the arrest was legitimate.
When asked during the interview whether she thinks Lutsenko was arrested legally now that she is no longer working for the government, she declined to comment, citing a pending review by the European Court for Human Rights.
She also declined to comment on the criminal prosecution and convictions of Tymoshenko and other opposition leaders, which are widely viewed in Ukraine and in the West to be politically motivated. She said she wants to study the cases and talk to people involved first.
As to whether she agrees with the assessment of international human rights watchdogs – including Freedom House, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – that Ukraine is backsliding on democracy and human rights, Lutkovska said that she “trusts these assessments,” but wants to verify them. “I have to analyze the situation [by myself] and express my own view,” she said.
Despite the skepticism among opposition regarding Lutkovska’s commitment to being independent, human right activists in the country expect her to do a better job than Karpachova. Unlike Karpachova, who was elected to parliament in 2006 on the list of Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, her successor says she neither has nor ever had any political ambitions.
“We expect her to be a better commissioner for human rights than Karpachova,” says Dmytro Groysman, coordinator of Vinnytsia Human Rights Group. She also said she is not afraid to earn enemies among those in power.
Lutkovska criticized Karpachova for failing to introduce measures to prevent torture and ill-treatment in prisons. Lutkovska also said she is committed to making her office more transparent and her work non-partisan.
“We have a weak human rights commissioner model, because there is no responsibility [for officials] for not fulfilling the commissioner’s recommendations,” she said.
Human rights activists for now are willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“She has authority,” said Yevhen Zakharov, head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, who was her competitor for the position.
Both Groysman and Zakharov praised her credentials as a highly qualified professional.
“Her main problem is that she is viewed as a Regions’ Party appointee,” said Groysman. “Now her job is to get rid of that, which is possible to do only through real deeds.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected].
