Statement of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement: Defending Human Rights and Ending Lawlessness in Territorial Recruitment Centers (TCCs)

We support Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets and his representative Andriy Kryuchkov in their resistance to the lawlessness of territorial recruitment centers (TCCs). We are concerned about the information attacks on the Ombudsman’s institution and the attempts by offending commanders to shift responsibility for their unlawful actions onto the human rights defenders who exposed them.

As a reminder, in April of this year, Lubinets finally acknowledged that TCC premises have effectively turned into places of detention without any legal grounds. He cited examples of the illegal detention of people in unsanitary and degrading conditions at the Uzhhorod District TCC for up to 50 days, the confiscation of documents and phones, and the deprivation of the right to legal aid and medical assistance. The photos and videos published by Lubinets shocked the nation.

Pacifists have many questions regarding formal brush-offs instead of human rights work by the Secretariat of the Commissioner and Lubinets personally in cases of brutal violations against conscientious objectors in general and our members in particular. We understand the pressure the Commissioner’s institution faces from the army and security service. We remember how he was summoned to the Ministry of Defense in 2024 and pressured not to insist on the unacceptability of legislation regarding tough mobilization that allowed systemic violations of fundamental rights.

However, it deserves respect and support that in some of the most egregious cases, the Commissioner and his representatives still dare to fight against gross and systemic human rights violations by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, or at least publicly tell the truth about terrible abuses, arbitrariness, inhumanity, legal nihilism, deaths, and severe injuries in TCCs.

The fact that after these illegalities are exposed, the perpetrators remain unpunished, investigations are formalistic, victims and human rights defenders face retaliation, and temporarily suspended officers return and continue in the same vein is utterly mind-boggling and demands louder public calls for reform.

We urge the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Ministry of Defense to review mobilization approaches that are incompatible with Ukraine’s obligations under Articles 3, 5, and 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and to stop obstructing the implementation of alternative non-military service in Ukraine during wartime, in line with Ukraine’s EU accession commitments. Pacifists cannot be forced into becoming part of the system of industrialized mass murder that is war and the armies that wage it. Kidnapping and torture should have no place in a democratic state governed by the rule of law, even during wartime.

We can and must defend Ukraine through peaceful, lawful means.

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