“The amnesty law is enforced!” Andrii Plakhonin ironically posted on Facebook. “With its usual modesty and without much fanfare, Pechersk District Court has closed criminal proceedings against the former head of Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) Oleksandr Popov and former National Security Council deputy secretary Volodymyr Sivkovych on February 7, acquitting people who had been accused of abuse of power related to events that occurred in the early hours of November 30, 2013 in Independence Square. Acting Prime Minister Serhii Arbuzov said he expected protesters to leave occupied government buildings in response.”
Besides acquitting Sivkovych and Popov, the Kyiv court also dropped all charges against former chief of Kyiv police Valerii Koriak and other commanders of Kyiv police. Several months of investigation into violent dispersal of students ended without result, with the guilty not punished.
The authorities accuse the opposition of causing their inaction. “Opposition MPs do not want to cooperate with the investigating authorities,” Party of Regions MP Volodymyr Oliinyk told The Day. “First, the opposition politicians say they have information about the details of an event, and then they state their unwillingness to share it with the police. Investigation needs cooperation. Perhaps, this is also an obstacle to the investigation’s successful conclusion.”
For its part, the opposition blames the authorities, advancing their own versions why the issue’s resolution is being blatantly delayed. “If they have not yet been able to find anybody who could be framed as responsible, be it even the mechanic who mounted the New Year tree, or to prove the guilt of the KCSA head or other officials, it can only mean that the order to disperse the Euromaidan came from interior minister Vitalii Zakharchenko or president Viktor Yanukovych himself. I see no other explanation for it,” Batkivshchyna MP Serhii Soboliev told The Day.
Meanwhile, experts argue that Pechersk District Court decision to acquit Sivkovych, Popov, Koriak and other officials is shameful for the government. The court dropped charges against all those who had been suspended from duty and charged with organizing the bloody dispersal of a peaceful protest in Independence Square in the early hours of November 30, but it did not bring to account anyone else. The state may remove suspicions against some officials and transfer them to others, but it may not officially absolve itself of responsibility.
“Responsibility of the state starts at the time of its creation and is terminated at the time of its liquidation. Otherwise, the state has no right to either reduce or modify in any way its responsibility,” Doctor of Law, Senior Research Fellow at the Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Mykola Siry told The Day. “The authorities have managed to interpret and use the parliament’s decision to get the court to absolve the state itself of any responsibility for its criminal acts, as recognized by the president, prosecutor general and other high officials. It goes against every principle of law.”
The expert also called the authorities’ actions regarding the so-called “amnesty law” authored by Party of Regions MP Yurii Miroshnychenko illegal and unconstitutional, as they demand the protesters to leave the government buildings and the streets in exchange for the release of detained activists. That law, by the way, expires on February 17.
“The government is authorized to absolve the protesters of responsibility, but it may not make release of some persons conditional on the behavior of others,” Siry said.
The Party of Regions considers these accusations unfounded, saying that the law’s conditions had been agreed to by opposition leaders and international institutions, and thus the authorities are not to blame. “The law is the law, and its conditions are not up for change,” Oliinyk said. “An objective assessment of the actions of both the authorities and the opposition can come from two arbiters – Ukrainian public and international observers. The opposition has no way out. It needs to convince people to comply with the amnesty law’s conditions, so it can be used.”
When asked why none of the officials and law-enforcement personnel were held responsible for the repeated attempts to disperse the protesters, the authorities’ representatives have failed to produce a clear response. Dropping charges against abovementioned persons can only worsen tensions. The authorities are not just failing to respond to concerns which from the outset brought hundreds of thousands of people to the street – they demonstrate once again their unwillingness to make concessions to the citizenry.
