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I have worked on the subject of torture and places of detention for many years, so there was no way I could not write this post.
Yesterday a video from the Odesa pre-trial detention center (SIZO) appeared online. What it shows is hard to watch: a person being humiliated and abused. According to the information that has come out, an entire system was operating in the facility — people held in custody were extorted for money, thousands of dollars, and those who couldn’t pay were thrown into the so-called “press khata”. Among the victims is reportedly an employee of a Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC). And all of this was allegedly done on the orders of the very people who were supposed to be guarding them.
The most frightening part isn’t even the video itself. The most frightening part is that the agency has effectively confirmed it. The State Criminal-Executive Service officially announced that an inspection has been launched, that the SIZO’s management has been suspended, and that a team has been dispatched to the facility. In other words, this is not a leak or a fake. It happened. In a state institution. In Odesa.
And here I want to say the main thing — without legal phrasing, just as one human being to another. A person in a SIZO is a person under the complete control of the state. They cannot flee anywhere, they can do nothing, they are entirely in the hands of those who hold the keys to the cell. And that is precisely why the state is responsible for them. The prohibition of torture is absolute. There is no “there’s a war on,” there is no “he had it coming.” Never. Not a single exception.
And I also want to ask — how much longer?
For how many years did international monitoring bodies write about the Odesa SIZO? How many times did we hear about “isolated cases,” after which nothing changed? Violence does not come out of nowhere. It accumulates where it goes unnoticed for years, where it’s easier to look away than to investigate. And now we see the result on video.
I don’t want to condemn anyone in advance — guilt is established by a court, not by a social media post. But I want guilt to actually start being established. Honestly. To the very end. Regardless of ranks and positions. Because if this once again ends with a suspension “for the duration of the inspection” and silence within a month — the next video will be even more horrifying. Impunity is always hungry.
That is why I will not stay silent. Today I filed a report with the prosecutor’s office on the commission of a criminal offense over what happened at the Odesa SIZO. Not because it’s my job. But because silence, too, is a form of complicity.
I love Odesa. And that is exactly why I feel ashamed and pained. Odesa deserves better. And people — even those behind bars — deserve to be treated as human beings.
How much longer. There has to be a limit. And it is — here.
