Over 600 appeals regarding human rights violations have been received from residents of Chernihiv region since the beginning of 2024

Since the beginning of 2024, 627 appeals have been received from residents of the Chernihiv region to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. This is twice as many as in the same period last year.

This was reported by the representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Commissioner for Human Rights in the Chernihiv region, Larysa Shumna, during a working meeting with the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets in Chernihiv.

According to her, there were 1,253 such appeals for the entire year of 2023.

“Mostly, citizens’ appeals concern the search for missing persons, family members of military personnel, violations of children’s rights, and counseling internally displaced persons,” Shumna noted.

Also, according to her, the team of the representation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Commissioner for Human Rights in the Chernihiv region carried out 68 monitoring visits in 2023, and 25 since the beginning of 2024.

“We conduct monitoring visits to places of deprivation of liberty of citizens. There are up to 300 such places of deprivation of liberty of various departmental subordination in the Chernihiv region: these are not only prisons, but also social, educational, and healthcare sectors. We also conduct non-visit monitoring visits. These are, first of all, monitoring the websites of institutions, organizations, and establishments for compliance with citizens’ information rights.”

As reported at the same meeting Dmytro Lubinets, during such monitoring visits to the territory of Chernihiv region, human rights violations were recorded in the system of the Ministry of Justice, namely: the Department of Execution of Sentences.

In particular, we are talking about a situation when eight people were simultaneously in a pre-trial detention center with an area of ​​15 square meters.

“We wrote response acts, we hope that the situation will improve. We understand that the main caveat there, which we do not insist on, is the failure to provide a bomb shelter. This, in principle, is impossible as of now. But harsh treatment – when in fact there is less than two square meters per person – already falls under the interpretation, possibly, of torture,” explained Dmytro Lubinets.