Iryna Herashchenko: It is utterly important to pool the energies and efforts of public organizations and authorities to protect the human rights throughout the occupied Ukrainian territories, and help the suffering Donbas people.
This was said at the meeting with Stefan Melle, the Director of “DRA - German-Russian Exchange” Public Organization.
A wide range of pressing issues on the Donbas security and humanitarian situation was talked over in the meeting with the public representatives. The polar to the security challenges still are mines, unexploded shells, and explosive devices remnants, with which the whole Donbas land is just littered.
The situation is so serious that it is said to become a driver for making a special new law which is soon to be tabled up by the Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defence.
Humanitarian situation over the Donbas was given a particular consideration at the meeting. One hundred fifty-two Ukrainian citizens were said to be still held captive in the SRDLO’s keeps. This figure was voiced by the TCG’s humanitarian subgroup representative Iryna Herashchenko. “We are prepared to meet half-way on the hostages release issue. Our offer is to exchange some three hundred persons retained against the eighty odd Ukrainian citizens gripped and confirmed by SRDLO’s ‘authorities’. Please also take note 402 missing persons are yet registered throughout the Donbas territory. Within the TCG we have created the exchange mechanisms under control of Ukrainian, Russian and the Red Cross experts. Regrettably, the SRDLO-Russian side has been showing obvious snub to this initiative through their tacit and at times overt hindering and even blocking the work,” informed I.Herashchenko.
Stefan Melle with the colleagues thanked Iryna Herashchenko for the Donbas update in the run-up to their coming working visit to the East of Ukraine.
The public organizations reps informed the audience that within the recently initiated European civil society platform CivilMPlus they are going soon to meet with the local NGOrganizations of the Donbas in order to compile initiatives aimed at surmounting of the humanitarian aftermath of the East Ukrainian plight.
Worthy of note
What CivilMPlus is?
The members have set up an open and free platform, in which civil non-profit organisations (human rights, peacekeeping, humanitarian, amongst others) and independent representatives of civil society from Ukraine, Russia and other European countries have the opportunity to contribute to in a meaningful, cooperative way to the international negotiations regarding the rebuilding of Donbas as a peaceful region of a democratic Ukraine – part of a common, open Europe. The association intends to form and complete a plan of initiatives for the resolution of the armed conflict and to ease the hardship of those people who have suffered as its consequences in Eastern Ukraine.
The organisations entering into this association acknowledge the following common goals: a guarantee of adherence to international human rights principles, support for the restoration of peace and the primacy of law in all conflict territories in Ukraine.
Members of the initiative group for the creation of “CivilMPlus”:
• Association EASTERN PERSPECTIVE, Krakow
• Association of Middle East Studies, Kyiv
• Council of the Women of the Don Union, Novocherkas’k
• Centre for Civil Liberties, Kyiv
• East-Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiatives, Luhansk
• German-Russian Exchange (DRA e.V.), Berlin
• Human Rights Centre “Memorial“, Moscow
• Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Warsaw
• Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Kyiv
• Human Rights Initiative "Citizen and Army", Moscow
• Luhansk Regional Human Rights Center “Alternative”, Luhansk
• Donetsk Institute of Information, Donetsk
• MEMORIAL Germany e.V.
• Galina Pokhmelkina, PhD, Moscow
• VoxUkraine, Kyiv
• Ukraine Action, Paris
• Vostok SOS, Luhansk / Kyiv
• Institute of Public Affairs, Warsaw
• Andrey Yurov, human rights defender, Voronezh/Moscow