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Ukraine Military Censures Protesters for Occupying Buildings Abuse Claims in Ukraine Rise Among Protesters
(about 11 hours later)
KIEV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, after months of neutrality in the country’s civil unrest, published a statement on Friday that censured antigovernment demonstrators for occupying public buildings and raised the specter of military intervention, even though it did not endorse any role for troops in dispersing protesters. KIEV, Ukraine — Alarm mounted on Friday among Western diplomats and rights groups over the scale and severity of abuses during the civil unrest in Ukraine after an antigovernment protest leader who had been missing for a week stumbled out of a snowy forest to say he had been crucified.
The statement, addressed to President Viktor F. Yanukovych and expressing support for his efforts to resolve the crisis, said, “Servicemen and Interior Ministry troops of Ukraine called the forceful seizure of government buildings unacceptable.” It also said that the protesters were preventing state agencies and local governments from fulfilling their obligations and that any escalation in the conflict “threatens the territorial integrity of the state.” The activist, Dmytro Bulatov, said his captors had nailed his hands to a door after holding him in a dark room and beating him for days.
In another sign of a possible role for the military in suppressing the civil uprising here, a former defense minister, Anatoly Hrytsenko, who is now a member of Parliament in the opposition Fatherland party, said military officers had been asked to either sign a pledge supporting Mr. Yanukovych as commander in chief or resign. Mr. Bulatov, 35, who owns a garage in Kiev, said an ear and cheek had been cut with a knife and that his captors had threatened to gouge an eye out. “There is no place on my body that doesn’t hurt,” he said.
There were signs Thursday that negotiations that have halted skirmishes between demonstrators and riot police officers in Kiev and brought concessions from the government, including the resignation of the prime minister, were not going well. He spoke from his hospital bed in a video released online by fellow protesters. But the drama continued at the hospital, a private clinic in Kiev. As police officers arrived to investigate the kidnapping, other officers came for another purpose — to arrest Mr. Bulatov on charges of causing a public disturbance during the protests.
On Friday, Mr. Yanukovych signed a bill into law that grants amnesty to protesters who leave the government buildings they have occupied. He also signed legislation repealing an earlier package of laws that had restricted freedom of speech and assembly. Opposition lawmakers at the hospital, however, talked the second group of officers out of making an arrest.
The amnesty law, which lacked support from opposition lawmakers, stipulates that offers of amnesty will not take effect until the prosecutor general certifies that protesters have vacated all occupied administrative buildings, including those in provincial capitals that were seized last week. It also set a 15-day deadline, after which the police would clear the buildings. The demonstrations that have roiled the Ukrainian capital for two months seem to be taking a darker, ominous hue as reports of beatings and abductions of demonstrators and activists, once seen as isolated, if unnerving, are now made quite regularly.
At least four demonstrators died during battles with the police last week, and evidence of kidnappings and abuse by the authorities or their surrogates is mounting. Dmitry Bulatov, a prominent opposition figure who had been missing since last week, turned up Thursday in a village outside Kiev and said his captors had crucified him. Four protesters died during clashes with the police, and hundreds have been arrested. Evidence is mounting that the authorities or their surrogates have kidnapped, beaten or even tortured demonstrators. Human Rights Watch issued a statement Friday documenting 13 instances in which the police beat journalists or emergency workers during clashes last week, and noted dozens of other reported cases.
Mr. Bulatov, who led a group that organized caravans of cars to protests called AutoMaidan, said men speaking with Russian accents had beaten him, cut one ear with a knife and nailed him to a cross. It was not immediately clear how this was done. Journalists reported Friday that he had puncture wounds on his hands. Photographs showed him bloodied and badly hurt. “It’s possible to accidentally hit one journalist or medic during violent confrontations, but not dozens,” Anna Neistat, a program director at Human Rights Watch, said in the statement. “Police faced enormous challenges during the street fighting, but there’s no excuse for deliberately targeting reporters and medics.”
Stefan Fule, the European Union minister who oversees the joining of new members, posted on Twitter a demand for an immediate investigation into the Bulatov case and other cases of abuse of activists. “Urge authorities to act swiftly on kidnapping and torture,” Mr. Fule wrote. “This kind of violence and impunity is deplorable and must stop now.” EuroMaidan SOS, a group that tracks missing people, now counts 27 protesters as missing, not including Mr. Bulatov and two others, Ihor Lutsenko and Yuri Verbytsky, who were found in the same wooded area outside Kiev last week. Mr. Lutsenko survived, but Mr. Verbytsky froze to death after his release.
The protests began in November after President Viktor F. Yanukovych rejected a free-trade agreement with the European Union and turned to Russia for financial assistance instead. No direct evidence ties the government to abductions.
Mr. Yanukovych’s government has lately been offering concessions to its opponents. On Friday, a day after Mr. Yanukovych announced that he had gone on sick leave, he signed two measures into law — an amnesty for protesters and a bill that rolled back recent restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly.
Andrei Telizhenko, a friend of Mr. Bulatov who picked him up at the house where he had gone to call for help, then drove him to a hospital, said in an interview that Mr. Bulatov’s hands were punctured with wounds about the diameter of knitting needles.
Mr. Bulatov had been nailed to a door and left for several hours with his head covered in a bag, Mr. Telizhenko said. His captors asked how the protests were being financed and suggested that Western governments were playing a role. In particular, Mr. Telizhenko said, they asked, “‘What orders do you take from the United States ambassador?’”
On the drive to the hospital, Mr. Telizhenko said, his friend was in a state of shock, sometimes seeming aware of his surroundings, and sometimes not. At one point, according to Mr. Telizhenko, Mr. Bulatov said, “I want to go fishing.”
Doctors who treated him at the clinic, the Borys hospital, declined to discuss his wounds in detail; the hospital director said Mr. Bulatov had been moved from intensive care on Friday morning and was in “satisfactory” condition. Later Friday, though, he had been transferred back into intensive care to discourage the police from making the disorderly conduct arrest.
With the police on contradictory missions, and politicians and activists in the corridors, the hospital became a tense, confused place, illustrating, perhaps, the widening schisms and uncertainty in this country.
Among those at the hospital were Vitali Klitschko, the former boxing champion and leader of the opposition Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform party, who is scheduled, along with other opposition leaders to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday at a conference on European security in Munich. Ukraine is expected to dominate discussions at the conference.
“What they did to Dmytro is an attempt to intimidate all politically active citizens,” Mr. Klitschko said in a statement.
The Interior Ministry on Friday posted Mr. Bulatov’s photograph and name on its wanted list. Separately, it issued a statement saying he and his relatives had not cooperated in the investigation into his abduction.
The episode, however, prompted sharp responses from Western governments. Stefan Fule, the European Union minister who oversees the joining of new members, posted on Twitter a demand for an immediate investigation into the Bulatov case and others involving charges of abuse of activists. “Urge authorities to act swiftly on kidnapping and torture,” Mr. Fule wrote. “This kind of violence and impunity is deplorable and must stop now.”
The American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, said on Twitter that “we are extremely relieved that Dmytro Bulatov is alive, but shocked and outraged at the torture inflicted upon him.”