UN mission to investigate human rights abuses in Ukraine

UN monitors will investigate all cases of human rights violations in Ukraine, no matter who the perpetrators are, a senior UN official said on Friday, according to RIA Novosti.

Speaking via video conference from Kiev, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic announced to reporters in New York the immediate deployment of a UN monitoring team throughout Ukraine.

Its mission will be to help establish the facts surrounding alleged human rights violations, including in the autonomous region of Crimea, where “the situation is particularly troublesome.”

Crimea, an autonomous majority Russian-ethnic republic in Ukraine, will hold a referendum Sunday on secession and annexation by Russia.

Masked men the US insists are Russian troops have seized key infrastructure and military bases on the peninsula in recent weeks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied the men are under the control of Moscow, calling them “local militia.”

Simonovich said he was “gravely concerned about the situation in Crimea.”

“There appears to be no rule of law at present, and therefore a drastic deterioration in the protection of human rights, as well as rampant fear and insecurity due to misinformation, blocking of information and total uncertainty about what is coming next,” said.

Simonovic has been travelling through the country with a team from Geneva-based human rights officers for the past nine days. The team was not allowed to visit Crimea, but the UN official said that denial of access “did not prevent the team from assessing the human rights situation in the region."

Simonovic admitted that rights of ethnic minorities, including Russian speakers, were being violated in Ukraine, but said there have been no proof so far that the victims were persecuted because of their ethnicity or political views.

“Without an independent, objective establishment of the facts and circumstances surrounding alleged human rights violations, there is a serious risk that these competing narratives could be manipulated for political ends, leading to divisiveness and incitement to hatred,” he said.