?? Ukrainian human rights defenders held a series of advocacy meetings with representatives of European institutions and civil society in the Netherlands and Belgium with the support of the @Netherlands Helsinki Committee . ZMINA was represented by analyst and war crimes documentarian Borys Petruniok.
HRDs met with government officials and parliamentarians in The Hague, representatives of Dutch civil society, the EU’s Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, as well as with Belgium-based NGOs. They discussed, among other things, cases of arbitrary detention and torture of civilians in the occupied territories, and the mental dimension of the Russian war against Ukraine.
?? “We cannot and should not consider the war crimes committed by the Russian military against Ukrainian civilians as something isolated or something that concerns only specific units. The Russian Federation uses arbitrary detention, abduction and torture of civilians as a tool to achieve long-term political goals. In particular, to intimidate the population, destroy grassroots social ties in communities, and build “occupation administrations”. The systematic use of violence against civilians identified as pro-Ukrainian can be explained by political rather than “military” motives”, said?Borys Petruniok.
https://lnkd.in/eC2ePWKj
Senior Attorney at Grossman Young & Hammond
1 个月Congrats, Nicole! So well deserved!