Ukraine scraps human rights treaty for rebel areas, cuts services, freezes banks
Kyiv has suspended the protection of human rights and ordered the withdrawal of its institutions from areas controlled by local militia in the nation’s east. Rebels have branded the decree, which hits the population on winter’s eve, an ‘act of genocide.’
The move was prepared by
the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council last week and
enacted by a presidential decree signed on Friday. It has yet to
be ratified by the newly-elected parliament, but the decree
explicitly says that this procedure must be expedited – so there
is little doubt that the new governing coalition will adopt it
next week.
Arguably the most controversial part of the decree is the
suspension of the European Convention on Human Rights in
rebel-held areas. The convention, which guarantees basic human
rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe, has a provision which
allows some of its articles to be derogated by a signatory
“in time of war or other public emergency threatening the
life of the nation.”
Kyiv has been insisting that the military campaign it launched
against the dissenting provinces is not a war, but an
“anti-terrorist operation.” Apparently the operation threatens
the life of Ukraine, which will now observe only those provisions
of the convention, which cannot be derogated under any
circumstances. In particular, they are the right to life, the
prohibition of torture and slavery, and the right not to be
subjected to unlawful punishment.
Cutting ties with breakaway regions
In practical terms, the decree orders that many social and
economic ties with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk
People’s Republics be severed. Kyiv will withdraw all its
officials and evacuate its offices in rebel-held areas. The order
covers all public services, including crucial ones, such as
schools, hospitals, and emergency services.
The same measure is applied to all state-owned companies and
their employees and to prisoners serving terms in the affected
parts of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian central bank has been ordered to stop servicing all
banks operating in the rebel-held areas. The accounts of
individuals living there and companies located there have been
frozen. This will stifle the local economy, as businesses will
have to conduct transactions in cash or use a bartering system.
At the same time, the rules of taxation and budget transfers
between Kyiv and local governments in the Donetsk and Lugansk
regions will be altered under the decree.
Local heating and power plants will be subjected to a “special
procedure for accounting supplies of fuel” to ensure that their
debt will not grow. This potentially could involve cutting
supplies altogether to the plants that don’t pay.
Ukraine’s decision to halt subsidies to rebel-held areas may be
understandable. However, the problem of standing debts in
Ukraine’s energy sector has a long history, as energy companies
have been for years failing to collect payments from consumers,
and as a result pay for fuel supply.
The debt burden has been a de facto social subsidy by the
government – and a practice which the International Monetary Fund
wants eradicated as a condition for further loans to Ukraine. For
people in eastern Ukraine who may be left with no heat in the
middle of winter, it’s an issue of survival rather than economic
effeciency.
Ceasefire imperiled
President Petro Poroshenko’s decree also repeals a Ukrainian law
which provided special status for the rebel-held areas. The law
was adopted by Kyiv to deliver on its promises under the
ceasefire it negotiated with the rebels in Minsk in September.
Poroshenko threatened to repeal the law after the self-proclaimed
republics held elections on November 2 in defiance of Kyiv’s
order not to do so.
The new measures, while apparently in line with rebels’ desire to
be independent from Kyiv, have been harshly criticized by them.
“Poroshenko’s decree on the total socio-economic blockade of
Donbass is de facto an act on genocide and devastation of our
people,” Igor Plotnitskiy, leader of the Lugansk People’s
Republic, said.
He added that his government would not change its course, and
that people in Lugansk “will live better than Ukraine, which
will find the rule of the oligarchs worse and more devastating
than any blockade.”
A fellow official from the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis
Pushilin, said Poroshenko’s decree is “a flagrant violation
of the Minsk protocol.” He called on the OSCE, which
brokered the ceasefire deal together with Russia, to come up with
comments on the situation.
Kyiv conceding to reality
Poroshenko’s decree marks Kyiv’s acknowledgment of the reality on
the ground, prominent Russian human rights activist Lev
Ponomaryev commented.
“Those territories are not controlled by the Ukrainian
government, which cannot and does not want to perform its
functions, as we see. De facto they are acknowledging a certain
degree of sovereignty [of the self-proclaimed government over]
those territories,” he told RIA Novosti.
“In my opinion, the most important thing now is that
civilians don’t get killed there. If these measures held the
ceasefire, one could probably welcome them,” he added.
But Mikhail Fedotov, who
chairs the Russian Presidential Council for Human Rights, doubts
that.
“I believe those measures are dangerous and would hurt the
civilian population in the conflict zone,” he said.
“They are showing a desire to distance from the conflict
zone. It does not make progress towards a peaceful settlement of
the conflict.”
The presidential decree is one in a package aimed at stabilizing
the situation in Ukraine. Poroshenko’s other orders are aimed at
controlling the weapons that flooded the country amid the
deterioration of the police force and toughening up punishments
for war crimes, as well as reforming the military and energy
sector.