UKRAINE | Police batter and tear gas Roma

Thursday, 26 January 2012

The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) is calling on the Ukrainian authorities to investigate a violent police raid on a Roma settlement in Uzgorod. The Budapest ERRC sent a letter to the police chief and prosecutor regarding the raid that took place on 11 January 2012. A Ukrainian Ministry of Interior “special tasks unit” burst into the Radvanka settlement in the early hours of the morning, according to local media and residents. The operation had been planned and carried out as part of an ongoing operation to target places regarded as centres of organised criminal activity. The Interior Ministry’s police thugs violated Ukrainian law by using batons and tear gas on women, children, older people and people with disabilities in the community. The ministry, it appears, is extending reasonable suspicion of individuals, who may have been implicated in criminal activities, to the whole community. The ERRC is now calling on the authorities to launch an official investigation into the precise legality of the police actions in Uzgorod. If the results show that these actions were unlawful, the perpetrators must be held accountable under Ukrainian law, the ERRC is demanding.