You're reading: Open Democracy: The Nine

At the office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, employees – prosecutors, assistants and secretaries – step cautiously over human bodies to get in to work. The bodies are alive, lying on the frozen ground in protest at the imprisonment of innocent people – ‘The Nine’; and calling on the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Viktor Pshonka, to set them free. 

A short while ago, these detainees were ordinary, peaceful people. They didn’t know each other, they had had no problems with the law, and they worked in a variety of jobs. They include a journalist, a long-distance lorry driver, a manager, a sales assistant, a student, a photographer, an architect and an engineer. They are from different parts of Ukraine, and had come to Kyiv for the peaceful Popular Assembly (the Veche) on December 1st.  Now they are united in imprisonment, accused of organising mass public disturbances near the Presidential Administration on that day. 

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