 |
| VOST President Olexandr Dzhulyk in the WOW office during his visit to Brussels. |
During his visit to Brussels I had the
opportunity to speak with Olexander Dzhulyk, president of the Ukrainian trade
union confederation VOST. It was on the same day that the Ukrainian minister of
foreign affairs had decided to cancel the summit to be held in Yalta because of
a boycott of many European heads of government. It was also the 20th day of the
hunger strike of former prime minister Yulia Timoshenko that she started in prison
because she was beaten by prison guards.
VOST is convinced that Timoshenko has been
imprisoned for political reasons. During the 2010 elections she was the
strongest contester of president Janukovic. He won the second round of
presidential elections only by electoral fraud (especially in the eastern part
of the country) that gave him a 3% more votes than Timoshenko. But what makes
things worse is that president Yanukovic himself has become a prisoner of
criminal gangs. Therefore, the struggle for the freedom of Timoshenko is not
only a struggle for democracy based on free and fair elections but also against
political banditry.
As long as resolution 1862 (2012) of theParliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is not fully implemented by
president Yanukovic, VOST will support the boycott of the European football
championship as already has been announced by some European political leaders.
In this Resolution (article 2) the Assembly
expresses “its concern with regard to the criminal proceedings initiated under
Articles 364 (abuse of office) and 365 (exceeding official powers) of the
Criminal Code of Ukraine against a number of former government officials,
including the former Minister of the Interior, Mr Juriy Lutsenko, the former
acting Minister of Defence, Mr Valeriy Ivashchenko, and the former first Deputy
Minister of Justice, Mr Yevhen Korniychuk, as well as the former Prime
Minister, Ms Yulia Tymoshenko.”
 |
| Yulia Timoshenko shows one of her bruising due to beatings by a prison guard. |
Article 3 of the Resolution says: “the
Assembly considers that Articles 364 and 365 of the Criminal Code are overly
broad in application and effectively allow for ex post facto criminalisation
of normal political decision making. This runs counter to the principle of the
rule of law and is unacceptable. The Assembly therefore urges the authorities
to promptly amend these two articles of the Criminal Code in line with Council
of Europe standards and to drop the charges against former government officials
which are based on these provisions. The Assembly wishes to emphasise that the
assessment of political decisions and their effects is the prerogative of
parliaments and, ultimately, of the electorate, and not of the courts. In this
respect, the Assembly asks the President of Ukraine to consider all legal means
available to him to release these members of the former government and to allow
them to stand for the upcoming parliamentary elections. It considers that
strict international standards delimiting political and criminal responsibility
need to be developed.”
In article 4 “the Assembly regrets the
numerous shortcomings noted in the trials against former government officials
and considers that they may have undermined the possibility for the defendants
to obtain a fair trial within the meaning of Article 6 of the European
Convention on Human Rights.”
Therefore VOST will continue its struggle
for democracy in Ukraine as started in 2002 by the Orange Revolution as long as
Resolution 1862 is not implemented by the actual Ukrainian Government.
No comments:
Post a Comment