{"id":221758,"date":"2022-10-10T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=221758"},"modified":"2022-10-10T08:23:41","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T07:23:41","slug":"ukrainian-nobel-peace-prize-winner-what-we-need-today-is-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/10\/ukrainian-nobel-peace-prize-winner-what-we-need-today-is-weapons\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize Winner: \u201cWhat We Need Today Is Weapons\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oleksandra Matviichuk, who heads Ukraine\u2019s Center for Civil Liberties \u2014 just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize \u2014 spoke with us last month.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A Ukrainian flag hangs on the Center for Civil Liberties office wall as staff celebrate winning the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 7, 2022, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo: Ed Ram\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Oct 2022 – <\/em>A Ukrainian human rights organization which has been documenting Russian abuses in Ukraine was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. The group, the Center for Civil Liberties, was one of three recipients of this year\u2019s award, which also went to the Russian human rights group Memorial and to the imprisoned Belarus activist Ales Bialiatski.<\/p>\n

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Last month, The Intercept spoke with Oleksandra Matviichuk, who heads the Center for Civil Liberties. She\u00a0talked about her group\u2019s effort documenting human rights abuses that began long before Russia\u2019s February invasion of Ukraine, how the international community\u2019s failure to hold Russia accountable for earlier\u00a0crimes led to\u00a0the invasion, and why countries that want to support Ukraine should provide military assistance. As she put it:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need today is weapons, and\u00a0maybe it\u2019s weird to hear that from a human rights lawyer, but I\u2019ll be very honest with you: I have spent 20 years defending human rights, and now I have no legal instrument which has worked in this situation.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What follows is a transcript of that interview, condensed for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Oleksandra Matviichuk – Radio Free Europe<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Oleksandra Matviichuk:\u00a0<\/strong>We were the first organization who sent mobile groups when the war started. I mean, when the worst started not in February 2022 but in February 2014, when Russia occupied Crimea, and parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. So we have been documenting war crimes for eight years already. When the large-scale Russian invasion started in February this year, we understood that we were not able to cope with the enormous amount of crimes and document them by our own efforts.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we restored our volunteer initiative, from Maidan Square, and allowed ordinary people to become volunteers. We use a methodology which I call screening, because it\u2019s not like documentation under international criteria. Ordinary people have no solid knowledge of international humanitarian law or fieldwork, etc. So we elaborated a very simple methodology: We asked people to use our very simple questionnaire, with five questions, and to make a video or audio or written report of testimonies of victims and send this material to us. Because this was very easy to do, we received a lot of stories, very quickly, and contacts of people with whom we can follow up later to ask for more detail.<\/p>\n

In parallel, we united our efforts with several dozen organizations, mostly regional ones, into the Tribunal For Putin<\/a> initiative. This is professional documentation; we use one methodology and one database and work throughout the country to document war crimes and crimes against humanity. We have an ambitious goal: to document each war crime episode in the smallest village in each oblast of Ukraine under Russian attack. Working together for these seven months, we have documented more than 18,000 crimes \u2014 and this is just the tip of the iceberg because Russia uses war crimes as a method of war.<\/p>\n

Russia tried to break people and to conquer the country by inflicting immense pain on the civilian population. The Russian army intentionally ruins residential buildings, churches, hospitals, schools; they persecute and terrorize civilians in occupied territories by abduction, sexual violence, etc. They use indiscriminate weapons in densely populated areas. They do everything in order to take control over this region.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alice Speri:\u00a0Is all this documentation geared toward a future prosecution? Is this done with an eye at a legal process, or is it more about collecting a public record?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OM:\u00a0<\/strong>I ask this question to myself, for whom are we documenting all these war crimes? Because we\u2019re not historians, we\u2019re not doing this for the national archives. We do it for future justice, and I see a clear gap of accountability. At the current moment, the Office of the General Prosecutor of Ukraine opened more than 32,000 criminal proceedings. It\u2019s obvious that even the most effective national system in the world wouldn\u2019t be able to effectively investigate each episode of these 32,000 criminal proceedings. And we can\u2019t rely upon the International Criminal Court in this regard, because the ICC will limit itself only to several selected cases.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAll this which we have observed in Ukraine is the result of total impunity, which Russia enjoyed for decades.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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So the question is: Who will deliver justice for hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes? And that\u2019s why we don\u2019t only document war crimes, we do advocacy at the international level. We have to create an international tribunal on war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, and hold Russian perpetrators accountable. Because all this which we have observed in Ukraine is the result of total impunity, which Russia enjoyed for decades, because the Russian army committed the same war crimes in Chechnya, in Moldova, in Georgia, in Mali, in Libya, in Syria \u2014 and they have never been punished. And this led to a situation where Russians started to think that they can do whatever they want.<\/p>\n

AS:\u00a0While the focus has been mostly on war crimes and crimes against humanity, there doesn\u2019t seem an avenue yet to prosecute the crime of aggression.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OM<\/strong>:\u00a0It\u2019s another gap. Ukrainian authorities promote the idea of creating a special tribunal on aggression because the ICC has no jurisdiction on this crime in Ukraine. And this crime is very reasonable. It doesn\u2019t take years to investigate; the fact of the invasion is obvious, the case could be done in months, not years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis war is not between two countries, but between two systems: between authoritarianism and democracy.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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We need to have an agreement between states to break this circle of impunity, but also we need to obtain the endorsement of international organization. The better option would be to create such a tribunal in the framework of the United Nations. We need to obtain the majority of votes in the General Assembly. Another variant is to create this tribunal in the framework of the EU, which is also possible because this war is going on in Europe, and this war is not between two countries, but between two systems: between authoritarianism and democracy.\u00a0We are fighting not only for our freedom, but for the right to have freedom and democracy, for all.<\/p>\n

We need to ensure justice, but justice takes time. And when we speak about the creation of additional international mechanisms, it can\u2019t be done tomorrow. So what we need today is weapons, and maybe it\u2019s weird to hear that from a human rights lawyer, but I\u2019ll be very honest with you: I have spent 20 years defending human rights, and now I have no legal instrument which has worked in this situation. The whole U.N. system couldn\u2019t stop Russian atrocities. And first of all, we need to survive. And that\u2019s why we need weapons, and especially long-range weapons, in efficient amounts, because we need to stop Russian troops, and also, we have to de-occupy territories where the horror against civilians is still going on. Now the Ukraine army has liberated the Kharkiv region, and we see they used mass graves in Izium and other cities in the Kharkiv, region, and we see they used torture chambers, where people were tortured, raped, and killed. And what we see now in liberated areas\u00a0going on right now, in this second, in other territories that are still under Russian occupation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhat is still lacking in the 21st\u00a0century is an effective mechanism to bring perpetrators to justice.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Also, there are a lot of digital tools to document this. Now everyone can be a documentarian. In the 21st\u00a0century, because of technology, we have a lot of ways to document war crimes. What is still lacking in the 21st\u00a0century is an effective mechanism to bring perpetrators to justice.<\/p>\n

AS:\u00a0Is Ukraine a test for our international accountability mechanisms?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OM<\/strong>:\u00a0Ukraine is a chance. The test has already failed, for example, in Syria. They were faced with the same situation, even worse, because their national government did not want to investigate crimes because the Assad regime committed these crimes. But why do I say that Ukraine is a chance? Because when we develop additional mechanisms and hold perpetrators accountable, it will show other authoritarian leaders in the world that such behavior is not tolerated anymore. Ukraine\u2019s lessons can save people\u2019s lives in other countries.<\/p>\n

AS:\u00a0Is there enough support internationally to deliver this accountability?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OM<\/strong>:\u00a0I\u2019m not a politician or a diplomat, I\u2019m a human rights defender, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m very direct. I don\u2019t see a huge demand for justice at the international level; I see a demand for peace. But the problem is that sustainable peace is not possible in our region without justice. The decades of Russian wars in different countries are proof of this: We need to achieve justice, and then we will be able to have sustainable peace in our region, when we hold Russian perpetrators accountable. And this understanding is very slowly coming to the minds of people who take decisions at the international level and in other countries. And I hope that this perception and this understanding sooner or later will prevail.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alice Speri – <\/em><\/a>alice.speri@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat we need today is weapons, and maybe it\u2019s weird to hear that from a human rights lawyer, but I\u2019ll be very honest with you: I have spent 20 years defending human rights, and now I have no legal instrument which has worked in this situation.\u201d
\n— Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of Ukraine\u2019s Center for Civil Liberties, recipient of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":221773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[91,1074,1846,2717,818,278,961,70],"class_list":["post-221758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nobel-laureates","tag-nato","tag-nobel-peace-prize","tag-nobel-peace-prize-watch","tag-nobels-will","tag-proxy-war","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}