Felix Corley (Forum 18) — on October 18th, 2024
On 11 June, Recruitment Office officials tortured Adventist conscientious objector Pavlo Halagan to pressure him to accept mobilisation. “They tied me to the bed with chains and began to physically torture, punch and beat me,” he complained. On 1 July, at a military camp, “one commander grabbed me by the neck”, Baptist conscientious objector Kiril Berestovoi complained. “He hit me on the head, beat me around the heart.” The torture lasted half an hour. Officials use a range of means to persuade men to accept being conscripted into the armed forces, including verbal persuasion, threats of imprisonment or unspecified consequences, arbitrary detention (sometimes for several months), and torture including deprivation of food, of imprisonment or unspecified consequences, and beatings.
Officials in Recruitment Offices and military units are subjecting men – including conscientious objectors – to a range of pressures to try to force them to accept being conscripted into the armed forces. The means used by officials include verbal persuasion, threats of imprisonment or unspecified consequences, arbitrary detention (sometimes for several months), and torture including deprivation of food, of imprisonment or unspecified consequences, and beatings.
Article 35 of Ukraine’s Constitution guarantees the right to conscientious objection to military service. However, in peacetime this is limited to members of only 10 specific religious communities. At a time of war, officials do not recognise it at all.
Men summoned to Recruitment Offices face strong pressure to sign military papers, even if they ask to perform alternative civilian service in line with Article 35 of the Constitution. “You have to be very strong to resist this pressure,” a Protestant leader from the west of the country told Forum 18. “Those who want to do alternative civilian service are not given it”
Council of Churches Baptists Matfei Sapozhnikov, who is from Kamenets-Podilsky, has been forcibly held in a military unit since 1 May, and Kiril Berestovoi, from Khmelnitsky, since 1 July. One military base in Khmelnitsky Region holds five conscientious objectors, two of them since May.