"All that universal evil that we imagine has specific hands, there are fingerprints on these hands. Our task is to identify them," explains lawyer, human rights activist Vitaliy Kolomiyets. Therefore, the initiatives FreeRiff, FreeDrKuzmenko, the Resistance Movement to Capitulate, lawyers from OK Legal, Sense Consulting, lawyer Taras Bezpalyy joined forces and created online platform "Lawmaker". It will collect data on judges, investigators, prosecutors, police officers and other individuals involved in politically motivated persecution. website It also describes politically biased cases, their timeline, and the schedule of upcoming court hearings.
Currently, the platform is considering the cases of Sheremet, Tetyana Chornovol, Serhiy Sternenko, Andriy Denysenko (a politician, volunteer, public figure from Dnipro, who is being prosecuted for criticizing the authorities), about the “attack” on Syvokho (against veterans Serhiy Tamarin, Yuriy Kaplya and Alexander Demidov “Volkova”).
The database of “persecutors” includes 65 people, including 23 prosecutors, 22 judges, 10 investigators, nine police officers, four experts, and one facilitator (actually, Serhiy Syvokho). The database is constantly being updated.
The goal is to stop repression.
“It’s nice to see you all out of court!” – rejoices in court for the events of the Revolution of Dignity Tatiana Chornovol before the presentation of "The Lawgiver" at the Crisis Media Center on January 14. The event was attended by defendants in cases (who are not behind bars), lawyers, activists, and journalists - in fact, the same people who traditionally meet at court hearings in "political" cases. The only thing missing for the usual atmosphere was a police cordon and police cars outside.
Among the coordinators and speakers of "Pravotvorets" are volunteer Petro Kiyan, husband of Yulia Kuzmenko, Serhiy Parkhomenko and Yuriy Honcharenko - members of the coordination council of the Movement of Resistance to Capitulation. The repressed also came - activist and blogger Serhiy Sternenko, military medic Yana Duhar, People's Deputy of the 8th convocation Tetyana Chornovol, veteran-"Azov" Serhiy Tamarin.
Yulia Kuzmenko spoke based on the video from house arrest. Also speaking were Vice-President of the Ukrainian Youth Union, representative of the FreeFiff initiative Oleksandr Gagayev, who is coming to court in the Sheremet case as a guarantor, lawyers Vitaliy Kolomiyets from OK Legal – defense attorney for Dugar and Sternenko, Leonid Maslov, director of the law company Sense Consulting and defense attorney for Andriy Antonenko.
Serhiy Parkhomenko explained:
The main goal of "Lawmaker" is to counteract politically motivated persecution of Ukrainian citizens by representatives of law enforcement agencies and authorities.
The platform's task is to monitor the activities of law enforcement and judicial bodies for signs of politically motivated cases, identify and provide legal assessment of violations, coordinate public opposition to repression, and protect repressed citizens at the international level.
"The final chord, one of our goals is to stop repression as such, to stop politically motivated persecution of our citizens," Parkhomenko noted.
Now The initiative's supervisory board is being formed, which will include prominent dissidents of the Soviet era, prisoners of the Kremlin, human rights activists, public figures, journalists - people who have moral authority and are leaders in their field of activity. It is this council that will make the final decision on which case “Lawmaker” will take up for development.
The work is carried out on a volunteer basis, and all data for the platform is taken by activists from open sources, carefully checking them, he explained. Yuriy Goncherenko.
“I want to thank the Youcontrol service, which gave us the opportunity to use and work with registers, in fact, to search for information about those who persecute,” the ROK activist noted.
Funds are collected using the "hat method", meaning anyone can support the project. The money is needed for technical maintenance of resources and advertising on social networks, for translations of texts, etc. (the plans are to convey information to international authorities).
"First of all, we will work with the Ukrainian diaspora, we are already working with it. The diaspora will convey information to the governments of their countries," Parkhomenko said. "There will also be official appeals, informing the embassies of NATO member states, the EU, Australia and other countries. International organizations - the UN, NATO, the EU, human rights organizations, etc. Information will be transferred to them on each case that we are considering, with a justification for why we consider the people who appear, on the one hand, to be repressed, and on the other hand, there are people who organize repression."
"So that everyone sees this, so that not only the conditional Anton Gerashchenko comes to the ambassadors and says: "Oh, everything is not so simple there, you don't understand, we still have a ton of information," the lawyer added. Vitaliy Kolomiets.
"Ghouls are afraid of the light"
“There is a theory that what we allow to be done to us is what is done to us. Unfortunately, this theory has a practical application in Ukraine,” said a volunteer, a pediatric surgeon, from the screen. Yulia Kuzmenko, accused of involvement in the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet. “Our ability to resist this gives us the opportunity to literally survive, and it is also the future of our children. Fighting the system requires a certain system. And this site is a manifestation of such systemic resistance.”
Serhii Sternenko reminded of the need to record the names of all links of the persecutors - from the customers to the executors: "We all remember that the organizer of the persecution of Yulia Tymoshenko was Viktor Yanukovych at one time. However, not all of us remember the names of the prosecutors who participated in the trial against Tymoshenko or in other trials. This is very bad."
"Ghouls are afraid of the light. Those people who engage in illegal criminal activities are afraid of publicity."
Creating such a database is extremely important, because in the future we will be able to use it to quickly navigate personnel policy.
"Perhaps this information resource will prevent one of the defendants from becoming a judge of the Supreme Court, prosecutor general or his deputy," Sternenko said, urging not to forget the names of our enemies.
"Information is truly a weapon"
Tetyana Chornovol told the details your case, related to the arson of the Party of Regions office in February 2014: "In my case, I am not the only one being persecuted. They are "sewing" the organization of the murder on me. It seems that I organized a whole list of unidentified persons. By and large, there is a huge number of persecuted people in my case, their names have not yet been established. This just means that the case is intimidation. Because suddenly someone will "cross Zelensky's path" and they will remember that he was also on the Maidan on February 18, and why not "sew" the "Chornovol case" on him?.. "
At the same time, Tetyana noted, for investigators, the only evidence of her involvement in the murder of the Party of Regions security guard is that she was seen among the participants in the storming of the office. And similar accusations can be "hanged" on any of those who took part in the protests on February 18.
Accordingly, those who inspire such political actions must be named.
"Information is truly a weapon, especially in the 21st century, in the conditions of digital warfare, which is no less important than ordinary aggression. Because openness and objectivity become the values that need to be protected," the soldier of the Azov regiment is convinced. Sergey Tamarin.
In his case, in the case of "attack" on Serhiy Sivokho, comparing the word with a weapon is hardly a metaphor. A criminal case was opened against Tamarin and his comrades Demidov and Kapla under Article 296 of the Criminal Code, Part 4 – “hooliganism committed by a group of persons using firearms, cold weapons, or other objects adapted for inflicting injuries.”
“On the one hand, I am pleased that my words and my civic position are perceived in this way. On the other hand, unfortunately, there are legal consequences of such an unlawful qualification,” says the veteran. “On the first evening after the forced detention, we went to spend the night in the detention center. The next day, the case was reclassified to part 3 – less serious, and now the court is going through this part. But it is very demonstrative that they did not seize my weapon! There are many cameras, more than 20 news agencies covered this event – the “Syvokho Reconciliation Platform”, where it is clear that there are no explosions or stabbings. Yes, there is a high degree of communication, there is a small push, but part 4?! The investigator denied us the right to question witnesses who were at the scene, in person, in the simultaneous questioning of me and Syvokho himself, we were denied all motions at the investigation stage, at the trial stage – to disqualify the judge, to disqualify the prosecutor’s office, to close the case due to the lack of real elements of the crime…” The court also did not include the medical examination of the victim – Serhiy Syvokho – in the case.
Identify evil
"It seems to us that the system is boundless, immeasurable, amorphous, incomprehensible and strong. But when we begin to understand in more detail - who signed the resolution? Who signed the protocol? Who noted specific false information, petitions for the NSRD (covert investigative actions – “N”)"Who conducted the examination? Specific names emerge, and they often overlap," the lawyer claims. Vitaliy Kolomiets from OK Legal, which is also the defense attorney for both Yana Dugar and Serhiy Sternenko.
"Yes, in the cases of Sheremet Sternenko, an examination was ordered, the same investigators conducted the investigation... In fact, there is not an endless reserve bench. Someone is unhappy, someone is about to be expelled for drunkenness - and he is ready to write anything, someone was caught at some point - and they are simply used, these people... And anonymity gives them additional confidence in their actions. There may be a thousand of them. They need to be identified! Children, grandchildren should understand what their father did, what good and bad things he did," Kolomiets believes.
Not only the innocently accused suffer from arbitrariness, but also all of Ukraine, because people get used to living without justice, adds the lawyer Leonid Maslov – ATO veteran, who was the commander of the reconnaissance unit of the 92nd Brigade. According to him, the idea is imposed on society that injustice is the norm, the law is only for the weak, positions are for the unscrupulous, and loyalty to a deformed system is a guarantee of impunity.
"Judge Vovk, who illegally imprisoned Antonenko, illegally imprisoned Lutsenko before that, and sentenced him, and extended his preventive measures, which was established by the European Court of Human Rights, and Vovk is still there! The less professionalism and conscience you have, the more the system needs you," Maslov is indignant.
He was a member of the Public Integrity Council, which assesses the integrity of judges, including during the competition for the Supreme Court, and saw the dossiers of the contestants, including the current head of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Danishevska, and Prosecutor General Vednediktova. “Due to the lack of justice, I do not consider Ukraine to be a civilized country. The shameful judicial system that we inherited from the USSR is still alive, perfecting the most disgusting features and traditions,” the lawyer says.
Maslov emphasizes:
"The Lawgiver" is not about revenge, but about the destruction of the mafia.
"We should keep a record of the actions of judges - not in order to disgrace them personally, but in order to document shameful phenomena, the system as a whole, and lead society to zero tolerance for them," says Maslov.
He recalls the grossest violations in the Sheremet-Antonenko case: “Minister Avakov, as if it were necessary, stated live on air that during the consideration of the issue of the detention of the defendants, he did not inform Judge Vovk of the data in the court session. He announced the detention of the defendants on Twitter three hours before the decision on detention was made. The problem is that Avakov and devils like him consider this the norm, but in fact it is a crime. Vovk was in the conference room for 14 seconds! Imagine – 14 seconds to write the operative part of the decision, or maybe the minister sent him this decision via Twitter? And then he mixed up the court journals of Antonenko and Kuzmenko, and so we still have Kuzmenko’s journal in the Antonenko case, and Antonenko’s journal in the Kuzmenko case. Well, “what’s the difference”?!”
Maslov reminds us of the lack of judicial permits for covert investigative actions, which makes them illegitimate, and of the “profound demonstrative unprofessionalism of judges.” “It seems that they don’t read the nonsense they declare in their decisions, they copy and paste each other, including errors like ‘everyone has the right to sit in prison, being exempted from trial’ – this [judge of the Pechersk District Court Vitaliy] Pysanets executed all the decisions on Antonenko’s imprisonment “in carbon copy”. It’s horrible, but they use ECHR decisions in similar situations, made in favor of the individual, as grounds for imprisonment!” – emphasizes the ATO lawyer.
"Yurdyga, Frich and Slyva used the same arguments to justify the release of Yulia Kuzmenko and the imprisonment of Andriy Antonenko!" adds Maslov. "And the height of arrogance and arbitrariness was the decision of the investigating judge Konstantinova to demand that the defense side familiarize themselves with the English original of Birch's examination. She wrote that this only evidence of the prosecution is a secret of the investigation! People have been in prison (at that time) for eight months, the materials have already been opened - and the only reason for the imprisonment is a secret of the investigation!"
Therefore, the initiators of "Pravotvorets" are firm in their intentions to prosecute judicial and prosecutorial evil. Serhiy Parkhomenko also announces that The lists of those involved in political repression will soon be filled with politicians themselves., by whose will this happens.
The site also has option for everyone
– to submit information about a case of persecution on political grounds.
"We may be politically different, some for the right, some for the left, but there is a value for society itself - law and order. And when someone commits an act of wrongdoing, we must oppose it - together, without looking for contradictions," stated lawyer Kolomiets.
“See you on Tuesday!” Yana Duhar smiles in farewell, referring to the next hearing in the Sheremet case.
