Human Rights Voices
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U.N. Inaction on Ukraine
All Actions of the UN Human Rights System Critical of Specific States, 2014
Dmytro Bulatov was kidnapped, tortured and left to die
Ukraine, January 31, 2014
Ukrainian protestor kidnapped, crucified and has part of his ear cut off before being dumped in a forest after a week of torture
Original source
A Ukrainian opposition activist who went missing last week says he was kidnapped, crucified and had part of his ear cut off in the latest attack on an anti-government protester.
Dmytro Bulatov, 35, a member of Automaidan, a group of car owners that has taken part in the protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, went missing January 22.
He was discovered outside Kiev yesterday and told rescuers that his kidnappers kept him in the dark for more than a week, beat him severely, nailed him to a cross and sliced off a piece of ear, before eventually dumping him in a forest.
'They crucified me, they nailed down my hands. They cut off my ear, they cut my face. There isn't a spot on my body that hasn't been beaten...Thank God I am alive,' Bulatov told Ukraine's Channel 5.
Footage shows his face and clothes covered in blood and his swollen hands showing nail marks.
Opposition leader Petro Poroshenko rushed to the hospital where Bulatov was taken last night.
'Dmytro asked to pass his greetings to everyone and to say that he has not been broken and will not be broken,' Poroshenko told Channel 5.
'That he is full of energy and despite the fact that he body was been beaten, Dmitry's spirit is strong.'
Police said they have opened an investigation and said the car he was driving when he disappeared had been found.
Bulatov is among three activists whose disappearances have shocked the country, especially after one of them was found dead.
He went missing one day after Igor Lutsenko, another prominent opposition activist, who was discovered after being taken to the woods and beaten severely by unknown attackers.
Lutsenko was kidnapped from a hospital, where he had brought a fellow protester, Yuri Verbitsky, to be treated for an eye injury. Verbitsky was also beaten severely and was later discovered dead.
The disappearances prompted an outcry from protesters, who accused the government of intimidating the opposition.
The protests started after Yanukovych backed out of an agreement to deepen ties with the European Union in November, but quickly came to encompass an array of discontent over corruption, heavy-handed police and dubious courts.
Negotiations between the authorities and the opposition on finding a way out of the crisis appeared to have stalled yesterday, after Yanukovych took an unexpected sick leave and told opposition leaders that it was now up to them to make concessions.
This week Yanukovych accepted the resignation of his Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and the parliament, which he controls, rescinded harsh anti-protest legislation that sparked last week's violence.
But a bill passed by Yanukovych's allies in parliament offered to grant amnesty to protesters only after they vacate scores of government-buildings they have seized across the country, a demand rejected by the opposition.
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