Lhe Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights wants to send a team “soon” to Izium, Ukraine, recently liberated from Russian occupiers, to verify the allegations of the Ukrainian authorities evoking the discovery of hundreds of graves and executions. “99%” of the bodies exhumed on Friday in Izium “showed signs of violent death”, regional governor Oleg Synegoubov said in the evening.
“Our colleagues in Ukraine from the human rights monitoring mission are verifying these allegations and they aim to organize a visit to Izium to determine the circumstances of the death of these people” found in this city, indicated Elizabeth Throssell , spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner, during the regular UN briefing in Geneva. “They will follow up and hopefully arrange a visit to Izioum soon,” she added.
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Ukraine said on Friday that it had found some “450 graves” in Izium, a town recently recaptured from Russian forces in the Kharkiv region in the northeast, a macabre discovery that President Volodymyr Zelensky attributed to “the ‘Russian occupation’. In Izioum, “there are several bodies with their hands tied behind their backs and one person is buried with a rope around his neck. Obviously, these people were tortured and executed,” said Oleg Synegoubov. The Ukrainian president had declared, Thursday evening, that a “mass grave” had been unearthed in Izioum, without further details. “Any information of this nature is shocking,” Elizabeth Throssell told reporters in Geneva. “That is why it is important that the circumstances of the death of people who may be in these collective graves are established,” she said.
I condemn in the strongest terms the atrocities committed in Izium, Ukraine, under Russian occupation. Their authors will have to answer for their acts. There is no peace without justice.
—Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) September 16, 2022
On Twitter, Emmanuel Macron reacted by condemning “with the greatest firmness the atrocities” that took place in Izioum. “I condemn in the strongest terms the atrocities committed in Izium, Ukraine, under Russian occupation. Their authors will have to answer for their acts. There is no peace without justice,” he wrote.
Boucha’s memory
When mass graves are discovered, it is important, explained the spokeswoman, to check whether they were soldiers or civilians, whether they were killed or died in the fighting or natural causes exacerbated by lack of medical care. “As you may recall, this is an issue that was raised many times during the fighting and the siege of Mariupol,” she said.
Agence France-Presse journalists who visited Izioum on September 12 saw a town devastated by the fighting with houses and public buildings destroyed and the remains of armored vehicles littering the roads. Russian forces have been accused by Ukraine of numerous abuses in the territories they occupy, in particular in Boutcha, on the outskirts of kyiv from where they withdrew at the end of March and where the corpses of executed civilians had been discovered. Russia denies committing these abuses.
On September 9, the UN said that its human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine had so far documented more than four hundred arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances by Russian forces in Ukraine as well as 51 arrests. arbitrary by Ukrainian forces. The mission is to publish a full report on September 27 on the impact of the Russian invasion on human rights in Ukraine.
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In addition, “ten torture rooms” were discovered in localities in the same region, national police chief Igor Klymenko said on Friday. “To date, I can speak of at least ten torture chambers (discovered) in localities of the Kharkiv region”, including two in the small town of Balaklya, he said, quoted by the agency. Interfax-Ukraine.