Week-ending 31 January 2025
“If and when negotiations take place, there will be extremely complicated issues that may take years to resolve, and meanwhile thousands of Ukrainians are held by Russia in horrific conditions. This campaign urges all actors to make the immediate release of civilian detainees, and the timely exchange and repatriation of prisoners of war the first issue they address.”
– Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, as quoted in ‘New Campaign Focuses on Russia-Ukraine Detainees. Negotiations Should Prioritize Freeing Civilians, Repatriation of POWs,’ Human Rights Watch, 28 January 2025
People First is a campaign initiated by the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties and Russian rights group Memorial, 2022 Nobel Peace Prize co-laureates, with a view to ensuring that the safety and rights of civilian detainees and prisoners of war (POWs) should be a priority in any future negotiations to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. Thirty-one human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, are supporting this campaign.
The demands set out by People First are as follows:
- In accordance with international law, all Ukrainian civilians captured and illegally detained by Russian forces, including those sentenced by Russian courts, be released and allowed to return home immediately and unconditionally. Those whose homes are in Russian-controlled areas, should be given the opportunity to leave for Ukrainian government-controlled areas of the country should they wish to do so.
- All illegally transferred or deported children be returned.
- It is also essential to ensure timely repatriation of deported Ukrainian convicts and patients of closed medical institutions, such as nursing homes and psychiatric facilities.
- All efforts are made to repatriate POWs, through exchanges or otherwise, as soon as possible, and no later than at the end of active hostilities as required by the Geneva Conventions.
- Russian political prisoners already sentenced to prison terms or awaiting sentences in connection to their antiwar statements and actions be released and should face no limits on their freedom of movement, including to travel abroad if they wish to do so.
- A special independent international mechanism is established to facilitate these processes, monitor their compliance with international humanitarian law, and ensure regular, transparent reporting on progress, including updates on the release of prisoners and adherence to humanitarian standards.
- Russia must provide immediate full access to all the captives and all illegally transferred or deported children for the UN agencies and ICRC.
The website of People First quotes Oleksandra Matviichuk, Ukrainian human rights lawyer in the lead of the Centre for Civil Liberties, the 2022 Nobel Prize for Peace laureate, and Oleg Orlov, Co-Chair of the Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre, former political prisoner and the 2022 Nobel Prize for Peace laureate, on the new initiative:
“In the years of the war, I have spoken to many survivors of the Russian captivity who told me how they and other captives were beaten, tortured with electric shocks, and raped. They told about having their nails torn out, their kneecaps shuttered. They described how they had been deprived of food and sleep and how the dying had no access to medical assistance. Freeing all the unlawfully detained and exchanging all the prisoners of war should be an absolute priority. The captives may not last long enough to see the end of the war.“
– Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Centre for Civil Liberties
“The terrible scourge of war has already affected tens of millions of people. Lives taken by war, cannot be recovered. It is all the more important to rectify what can be rectified. First and foremost, this means returning freedom to those who are in captivity because of the war. People, their freedom should be the priority of any negotiations”
– Oleg Orlov, Co-Chair of the Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre
