Citizenship and Immigration Committee on July 19th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), and the motion adopted by the committee on June 16, 2016, the committee will resume its study on immigration measures for the protection of vulnerable groups.

Please note that due to the sensitive nature of the committee's study, and as we hear from witnesses during the course of our study, the content of some witnesses' testimony may be upsetting to participants and the viewing public.

Appearing before us today are Mr. Michael Bociurkiw, here in Ottawa, who is the former spokesperson for the special monitoring mission to Ukraine for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and Mr. Aleksandr Galkin, director for the Right to Protection, R2P, who's appearing by video conference from Mariupol, Ukraine. Also joining us by video conference from Kiev, Ukraine, are Ms. Iryna Dovhan, Mr. Gennadii Afanasiev, and Mr. Oleksandr Gryshchenko.

We will be providing seven minutes for testimony from each of the witnesses. We'll begin with Mr. Bociurkiw here in Ottawa.

Mr. Bociurkiw, the floor is yours.

[Michael Bociurkiw, Former Spokesperson, Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Committee members and Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to speak before you today. It is indeed a great pleasure and an honour to be back here in Ottawa.

I've been specifically tasked to address the situation of internally displaced people in Ukraine and to propose recommendations on what Canada can do to assist those affected.

Ladies and gentlemen, a little over two years ago Ukraine had no displaced population. Today it is in the top 10 list of countries around the world with the largest number of internally displaced people, or IDPs.

There are essentially two contributing streams to this phenomenon. One, of course, is the illegal occupation of Crimea in March 2014, which sent a stream of men and women out of the peninsula and into areas controlled by the Ukrainian government. Second, of course, is the occupation of Luhansk and Donetsk by heavily armed individuals, which prompted upwards of two million Ukrainians to abandon their homes and communities for safer ground. You should know that many of those who fled are women and children.

It's the situation of the Donbass IDPs that I wish to address today. In front of you is a map of Ukraine, with the heavily coloured areas where most of the IDPs have fled.

In my two years with the OSCE special monitoring mission to Ukraine, I made several trips to Donetsk and Luhansk where we met with displaced families. We met them in processing facilities, in temporary homes, in collective centres, and some families near Sloviansk were even sheltered in abandoned train cars. Most were forced out of their homes and villages—not having left voluntarily—by intense shelling, while others feared legitimate persecution by rebel groups.

At first most IDPs expected to be gone in just a few weeks or months, and hence they didn't take many of their belongings or much documentation with them, but as the situation in Ukraine devolved into a frozen conflict, the Minsk accords notwithstanding, many are now resigned to the fact that they may never go home.

The extent of the damage after months of intense, indiscriminate shelling is absolutely mind-boggling. Roads, bridges, factories, airports, railway tracks, and essential infrastructure have been severely damaged. Even if peace were to suddenly take hold, as the OSCE has documented, there is still a large amount of unexploded ordnance and land mines that make it very difficult for civilians to travel back.

Among the more than 9,000 killed so far are hundreds who have been struck by land mines. We now know that cluster munitions have been used, including by the Ukrainian side, and this poses a particular threat to children.

Just as a quick footnote, among the some 9,000 killed are 298 individuals from several countries who perished in the downing of MH17. I urge you, when you have time, to remember them because on Sunday, July 17, it was two years ago that the plane was shot down.

As I said, there are many who have legitimate fears about returning to areas under rebel control. Any IDP who has expressed critical opinions about the rebels is at risk. There are well-documented examples of writers and others appearing on so-called blacklists at rebel-run checkpoints. Similarly, there are well-documented cases of journalists and others being detained, tortured, or they have disappeared completely.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently said that it has investigated the deaths of at least 47 people in rebel-controlled areas. In one particularly troublesome case it obtained forensic evidence showing that a six-year-old girl, her mother, and her grandmother were killed by gunshot wounds to the head in the rebel-held area of Luhansk. It's believed they were abducted by Cossack members of the so-called LPR.

Many of the people who have fled their homes, communities, and jobs were professionals: engineers, journalists, business owners. While many have found employment in areas controlled by the Ukrainian government, many are still unemployed, working well under their previous pay grade, or have been forced to switch to less desirable professions, for example, as taxi drivers.

While the integration of Donetsk IDPs has been mostly smooth, this in itself is extraordinary, given how woefully unprepared the Ukrainian government was to process them. There are reports of discrimination against Donetsk residents in their host communities and regions. For example, they experience problems seeking employment, trying to get apartments, seeking spots for their kids in schools, and opening bank accounts. A lack of civil documentation creates additional problems for the IDPs, and we are seeing a growing number of undocumented children, potentially leading to a risk of statelessness.

I should also add at this point that although their numbers are not huge, there are some minority groups, such as the Meskhetian Turks, who are living in very dire temporary shelters in Donetsk. By some reports there are 2,000 Meskhetian Turks who have been forced to flee their homes in Ukraine since the fighting started.

What can Canada do, ladies and gentlemen? Well, for one thing we should be encouraging the public and private sectors to create more internship opportunities for displaced Ukrainians. Also a very important aspect of this, of course, is liberalizing procedures for young Ukrainians to be able to travel to Canada to take up scholarships and internships, and at the same time encouraging Canadian academic institutions to open more spaces for this category of Ukrainians.

I don't think anyone here can dispute the value of face-to-face contact of young Ukrainians with Canadian values, with Canadian people, communities, and institutions; yet there are many young Ukrainians who have been denied visitor visas to Canada for unexplained reasons. I know, for example, of one particular case in which a young Ukrainian woman, who had worked for at least one Canadian election observation mission in Ukraine and now works for the Government of Ukraine, was denied a visitor visa. I ask you, what kind of example are we showing, when Ukrainians who have worked for our country and upheld our values are rewarded with a “no entry” stamp in their passport?

Ladies and gentlemen, while it's very easy to paint the picture of the plight of IDPs in terms of numbers and trends, there is a human face, much of it, as I've seen for myself, very sad indeed. Along with colleagues from the OSCE, I have followed IDPs along the contact line who were so desperate to check on their properties and belongings that they risked their lives to cross the contact line to see what remained of their bombed-out apartments, to collect precious belongings from piles of rubble, and to take a private moment to trace the faces of long-lost relatives in photos that have been almost completely obliterated by soot and damage.

To close, I want to tell you that when I first came to work for the OSCE as a seconded Canadian spokesperson, our OSCE ambassador to the OSCE in Vienna explained to me how, in many multilateral institutions such as the OSCE, Canada punches well above its weight; for example, contributing a high number of Canadian monitors to the special monitoring mission. When it comes to assisting Ukraine and its enormous numbers of displaced peoples, let's also punch above our weight. Let's think outside the box, be innovative, and clearly demonstrate that we are people whose rhetoric is matched by action.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Bociurkiw.

Now I'd like to ask Mr. Aleksandr Galkin, on video from Mariupol, for a seven-minute statement.

[Aleksandr Galkin, Director, The Right to Protection]

Chair and members of the committee, I am delighted to have such a great opportunity to share with you our regional humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

The Right to Protection is a Ukrainian not-for-profit organization operating in close partnership with the global NGO HIAS. R2P protects the human rights of vulnerable populations, the internally displaced, refugees, the stateless, and those at risk of statelessness.

According to the Ukrainian minister of social policy, at the end of June 2016 there were almost 1.8 million registered internally displaced persons from Donbass and Crimea. The most pressing problem facing the internally displaced is housing. Although the state is legally obliged to provide accommodation to people for the first six months of displacement, the available social housing and collective reception centres have been limited. The latter have only managed to accommodate between 30,000 and 40,000 of the most vulnerable people.

Another acute issue facing IDPs is employment. In the regions with a high concentration of IDPs—for instance, government-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk regions—the labour market was tight even before the conflict. With increased economic pressure resulting from the crisis, the employment situation is deteriorating further. Discrimination is also common in the workplace, with many job postings openly stating that people from Donbass will not be considered.

From February through June 2016, the government suspended pensions and social benefit payments to about 600,000 internally displaced people and those living in non-government-controlled areas, without prior notification. The prolonged suspension of payments has had dire effects on those individuals for whom these payments were the sole source of income. According to R2P monitoring, 85% of IDPs interviewed were significantly impacted by the suspension of their social benefits and/or pensions. This situation has had a particularly detrimental effect on persons with disabilities, reduced mobility, and/or poor health. According to the government, it has recently resumed pension payments to 80,000; however, this means that around 500,000 Ukrainian citizens previously receiving a pension no longer do so and are presumably living in poverty.

The Government of Ukraine has linked the payment of pensions, which is a constitutional right, with the payment of IDP social benefits. The social benefits to IDPs are about $46 Canadian dollars per month, generally inadequate to meet housing costs or other expenses such as the transportation of children to school.

The guiding principles on internal displacement are meant to ensure that displaced persons are able to move freely during displacement. However, restrictions on the right to liberty of movement continue in Ukraine. At the end of June, crossing the contact line was dangerous. Because of the hot weather, many people spent hours in lines under the burning sun without access to shade or water. Journalists reported on the death of elderly persons waiting in line near the checkpoints at Zaitseve and Stanytsia Luhanska.

Electronic permits for crossing checkpoints between government-controlled areas and non-government-controlled areas are required, but there are many people unable to complete an Internet application because of a lack of skills or unavailability of computers.

Overall, people living in non-government-controlled areas continue to experience problems accessing essential services and adequate social assistance. In order to receive social benefits, people must either relocate to the government-controlled areas or regularly travel across the contact line. Some people—for example, unemployed adults of working age and families with lots of children—have become increasingly vulnerable due to lack of social benefits and exclusion from humanitarian assistance.

According to monitoring, 93% of IDPs interviewed who report residing in non-government-controlled areas were significantly impacted by the suspension of their social benefit payments or pensions. The majority, 79% of them, reported that they receive pensions from the Ukrainian government and the pension is either their main or only source of income.

The situation of people residing on both sides of the contact line remains especially dire. Their access to humanitarian and medical aid is impeded due to security reasons and the ban on cargo deliveries.

R2P monitors report that this situation is critical regarding access to health services in the buffer zones or small towns and villages located close to the contact line. IDPs in the rural areas in the south part of the Donetsk Oblast region, as well as inhabitants of buffer zones, complain about the absence of availability of medical services. No medical facilities or physicians can be found in most villages in the southern part of the Donetsk region along the contact line.

In December 2015, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers adopted a two-year comprehensive state program to support the social adaptation and reintegration of the displaced until 2017, along with an accompanying action plan. The program and the action plan provide a framework for addressing various issues related to internal displacement, including durable solutions; however, in view of economic and financial constraints, no budgetary allocations have yet been made available for the program's implementation.

Initially, the institutional framework under which the government has been operating was complicated by many ministries tasked with supporting IDPs but without any real coordination among them. The Government of Ukraine has recently created the Ministry for the Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine; however, it's too premature to assess the ministry's performance.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Galkin.

We now move to Kiev, to our three witnesses who have spent time in incarceration in the occupied territories.

We will begin with the testimony of Ms. Iryna Dovhan.

Ms. Dovhan.

[Iryna Dovhan, As an Individual]

Hello, my name is Iryna Dovhan. I live in a small town close to Donetsk. Prior to those events in my region, I owned a private beauty parlour where I worked as a beautician.

In the summer and spring of 2014, a leftist propaganda campaign was launched in my town. I was proactive and I talked to people around me. I wanted our country to stay united, and I spoke about the possible risks if a neighbouring state interfered.

However, the situation rapidly deteriorated. It was very fast, and it became more and more dangerous to express an opinion. In my own town, I could see people wearing combat fatigues. They were armed and they spoke with a distinct Russian accent. Donetsk was full of armed people. Artillery positions were set up. There were more and more arms.

I drove to the unoccupied areas, and when I saw the first checkpoint of the Ukrainian army, I met the Ukrainian military and I talked to them. Their clothes were worn out and torn. They were underfed. They had no personal care items. It was a horrible situation, and this was my army, the army of my country, Ukraine.

On my return home, I spared no effort in collecting items needed by the Ukrainian army. Soon other women I knew joined my effort. I led them through my work. We started collecting blankets, bedsheets, and T-shirts. We cooked soup and made pancakes, and almost every day we took risks to take them to the Ukrainian army.

Every day it was becoming more and more difficult. During my last trip, we managed to receive some combat fatigues from some volunteers in Kiev. We took them to the new position of the Ukrainian army. There was a brigade there. On my return from the trip, I was caught in the crossfire, and my house was shelled. It was damaged. For several days I was hiding in the cellar of my house. My neighbours joined me there as well.

To avoid those risks, I decided to send to the free areas all the notes I had taken when people gave me monetary donations to assist the Ukrainian army, and the person who was supposed to take those notes was stopped by the terrorists. He was beaten badly, and to save his own life, he said that he had items given to him by a Ukrainian patriot. He gave my address and said that I had always actively promoted Ukraine and that I was carrying a Ukrainian flag in my car.

Then armed men in two trucks came to my place to arrest me. They were local people and military people, I think, who spoke with a Russian accent. They broke into my house and beat me up. I told them right away the pin number of my safety deposit box. They searched the entire house. They collected and seized all valuables, computers, and TVs. They found two pairs of binoculars that belonged to my husband, and that was the basis of why they said I was an artillery spotter guiding artillery strikes. They handcuffed me. I was blindfolded, and they took me to Donetsk to the Vostok battalion.

I was subjected to cruel interrogations. They wanted me to give them the addresses and names of those people who helped me in assisting the Ukrainian armed forces. I resisted. I understood what I meant to those people. That is why they sent me for another interrogation. It was the Ossetians, who were part of this Vostok battalion. These were very cruel people. They're implacable. They beat me and they stripped me. They would fire guns and shoot close to my ear. They threatened me with rape. I said many things that I didn't want to say. I gave the last names of people, but I knew that those people had already left town.

After that—after I told them everything—they took me and they placed me in the central square of Donetsk, put me next to a post, and put a sign around my neck saying, “Accomplice of punitive forces. Assassin of children.” I was beaten by people who were passing by. There were people who passed who had Russian accents. They drove by in jeeps, with the words “Allahu Akbar”. They beat me. They tried to shoot my kneecap. It lasted for about five hours.

In between, I could see that someone took a photo of me. It was a man wearing a white shirt. It was a foreign journalist. That photo, which was used by The New York Times, saved my life.

There, in the central square, I stood next to the post for about five hours. Then another armed forces group tried to seize me, but those who brought me there fought them off and got me back to the Vostok battalion. Again I was subjected to cruel torture. They hit me in the chest. They sprayed me with pepper spray in the face. I was in a very narrow cell, and the cell was inside the room. There were about 10 military people in that room. I saw other detainees who were brought to that room and saw how they were beaten, and then they were placed in other cells for further interrogation.

I cannot tell everything about this horror that I went through during those five days. I had no food. I barely had any water, almost nothing. Even now, I just don't have enough strength to tell some of the details of what happened to me there.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Dovhan.

Now I'd like to ask Mr. Gennadii Afanasiev for his statement.

Mr. Afanasiev.

[Gennadii Afanasiev, As an Individual]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

I also worked as a photographer.

At first I was against the Maidan because of the Russian propaganda, but eventually I came to a realization that it was propaganda.

On May 9, 2014, I took part in the Victory Day parade in Simferopol and I had a picture with me of my great-grandfather. He is the pride of the family. He participated in World War II. Suddenly some men in civilian clothes detained me and took me to a car. In the car they threw me on the ground, on the floor, and put a bag over my head. They were driving me and they took me to my apartment. They took my keys. They brought me into my apartment. I had a bag over my head. They were looking for some compromising pro-Ukrainian materials. Then they detained me. These were FSB personnel. They kept hitting me, beating me. They were beating me with boxing gloves so as not to leave any tracks on my head. I was detained for many days. I was surrounded all the time by interrogators, FSB officers. They wanted incriminating information on myself and other people. They were trying to accuse me of wanting to explode the Eternal Flame memorial.

I have to tell you some very unpleasant details about my detention because I think that you all should be aware of all the horrible things that are going on. It's been two years since the annexation of Crimea and there are many people who went through similar experiences to those I experienced. I was the subject of torture. They put a gas mask with a hose on my head and unscrewed a lower valve and sprayed the gas inside. I was throwing up. I was choking on my own vomit. They asked me to give evidence against Olexandr Kolchenko and Oleg Sentsov. I refused to incriminate them. In response they continued torturing me. They also demanded that I sign a plea agreement. Because of all the torture and pressure I had to sign it. They were also threatening to hurt my mother, and that had an effect.

During the trial of Olexandr Kolchenko and Oleg Sentsov I rescinded my testimony in front of witnesses and told in the court about the torture and the ways they made me give evidence against innocent people. Then I was transferred to prison again, but fortunately, because of the independent lawyers and human rights defenders, I managed to record these incidents. However, no one was actually punished for the torture that I suffered.

I was transferred to a nowadays gulag, which is the colony in the Komi Republic. The transfer was really hard. Air temperature reached 40 to 45 degrees. The railroad cars were so hot they had to be cooled down by a firefighting vehicle. There was no water and no toilets inside those cars. For two months and 15 days I had no communication with anyone. I didn't see anyone. I didn't talk to anyone except prison administration and security officials.

That's a very short version of the events that happened to me over a period of two years. For a person who stays in a solitary cell, every day lasts an eternity. It's a horror movie that is shown every day. I appeal to the international community to fight for those prisoners who are still captured, to support their families, and to maintain sanctions against Russia until the Kremlin meets its commitments.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Afanasiev.

Now I'd like to ask Mr. Oleksandr Gryshchenko for his testimony.

I'd also like to note that there have been sketches that have been appearing on the screen. Those are sketches by the artist Serhiy Zakharov, who was incarcerated in Donetsk. His testimony and his preferred method of bearing witness was through sketches of what he lived through.

Mr. Gryshchenko, the floor is yours.

[Oleksandr Gryshchenko, As an Individual]

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Oleksandr Gryshchenko. Before July 2014 I lived and worked in the city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, which is occupied by the illegal military groups now. I worked as deputy director of Luhansk regional veterinary medicine hospital. On July 15, 2014, Luhansk separatist militants captured me when I was entering our hospital office. I was unreasonably accused of attempting to install technical devices for artillery spotting for the armed forces of Ukraine. They caught and searched me.

I had a photo camera with me, and on its memory card the separatists found some photos of pro-Ukrainian protests in Luhansk in which I had taken part and also some photos from the Kiev Maidan barricades. As soon as they saw those pictures they told me that they must shoot me on sight or at least shoot my legs, but they told me they wouldn't be doing it themselves and that they would have to call a special so-called “counterterrorism” unit.

They took me to the Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University, which had been occupied by the troops of separatist militants called “rapid respond team Batman”. Batman is the nickname of its leader, Oleksandr Oleksandrovich Bednov. In the basement of the dormitory, which was turned into a prison, they tortured me while demanding from me that I admit to working for the Ukrainian army.

They were beating me with their arms, using an electric stunning device, suffocating me with a bag, beating me with a piece of plastic pipe, twisting my fingers, and using a surgical saw to make cuts between the fingers of my left hand. They put me under enormous psychological pressure and poured over me an unknown chemical solution. They also poured it inside my mouth. During the next several days they were often coming to my cell, humiliating me, and unreasonably beating me with arms, legs, and sticks. They also used a hammer and other tools.

There was a person whose nickname was “Maniac”, and he was especially brutal in his torture of me. I also witnessed when this person named Maniac, who was a sadist, abused a young girl aged approximately 15 years old. There were a number of tortures and incidents that I witnessed. Another example I can provide was when a young girl was given as a gift to other militants and there was a sexual assault in front of all the people around.

Before my eyes they tortured to death a man who was drunk and not understanding where he was. He said that he was for a united Ukraine. Just for saying these words he was tortured to death. Besides these examples, I saw several corpses of the captured that they were taking out of the basement. There was an episode when, after a beating and torture, the spleen of a detainee ruptured and caused internal bleeding. His life was saved only after an urgent ectomy of the injured organ in a city hospital.

There were a lot of Russian military men among the militants of the rapid response team Batman, and they didn't hide at all that they were from Russia. Some of them were also put for a short time into cells for different transgressions, in most cases for alcohol abuse. Sometimes they were nearly unconscious because of the enormous amount of alcohol they drank.

The conditions of detention didn't meet any sanitary standards. For more than a month they kept us in almost absolute darkness.

People were captured and detained under ridiculous accusations to provide unpaid labour power and to force these people to give their money, houses, cars, and other property to the militants. Sometimes these people were involved in compulsory labour, even seriously injured people and people with broken limbs. They repeatedly used prisoners for looting and plundering trading companies and warehouses, and to carry out robberies of the houses occupied by militants.

As the information about these crimes began to spread, to hide these crimes Batman ordered the physical destruction of the prisoners who had stayed in the basement for a long time and had witnessed these crimes. A group of the prisoners that I belonged to were placed in another basement, which they planned to bombard with grenades on some future day.

Our release became possible only because of the conflict between a leader of the so-called Luhansk People's Republic, Plotnitsky, and the leader of the unit that was led by Batman, who planned to occupy this highest post in the so-called LPR. Leakage of the information about the mentioned crimes, and also the combination of certain circumstances, which I can't describe because of lack of time, allowed me to be free.

I was a prisoner for almost a half a year. As I speak, in such conditions on the occupied territories, hundreds of my compatriots or my friends are kept. I appeal to the progressive world not to forget about them.

Thank you. Dyakuyu.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Gryshchenko.

Now we will begin the first round of questions. Mr. Afanasiev, you were initially incarcerated in Crimea. Who were the individuals who tortured you? What organization?

I understand that you were also tortured using electric shock. If you are able to, could you describe some of the torture you underwent? Of course, the first question is, what organization tortured you? Who were the individuals who tortured you?

[Gennadii Afanasiev]

I was detained by FSB officers and former security officials of the Security Service of Ukraine.

The torture was guided by the instructors from Moscow, but the actual torture was administered by the former SBU, the Ukrainian secret service officials.

They were using electricity on my genitalia. They used damp cloths and connected them to a live wire and they were electrocuting me with it. That was causing me excruciating pain. They would undress me. They would put me in different poses, and threaten. They were starting to sexually assault me. They were showing me a police baton and telling me all the things they would be doing to me with this baton, and what would happen next to me, from other criminals, when I was brought back to a cell.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

This question is to Ms. Dovhan.

We've heard that there is testimony quite regularly of sexual torture that takes place in the occupied territories. You alluded to this. How commonplace is sexual torture in those occupied territories?

[Iryna Dovhan]

At this point I cannot provide any specific proof. I know about several facts of sexual violence, from people who used to live in my town, Yasynuvata.

This was about 10 days ago. There is a department of dermatology in the hospital. A 17-year-old patient was taken there. They could see that there were some problems with her feet and her wrists. The dermatology specialist said all the bones had been broken. In all his experience and in his entire practice he had never seen anything that cruel.

This girl was brought in by the Vostok battalion. She was X-rayed, and then another battalion, the Kalmius battalion, took her back. I don't have any further details about what happened to that young girl. No one can say; no one knows. It's the latest case that I have heard about, but I know there are quite a few cases like this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Yesterday we heard from an official from the UNHCR that in 2015 there were an additional 800,000 internally displaced persons in Ukraine. That's on top of a million internally displaced persons from 2014, when the Russian military invasions began. The small piece of land that's currently occupied in Donbass had a population of about five million. Approximately 40% of the population is no longer there.

What are the conditions that have led to and continue to lead to what appears to be the wholesale depopulation of the, I guess, ironically so-called people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk? What is causing this huge movement of hundreds of thousands of people?

[Michael Bociurkiw]

I think there are two answers to that question. As I recently told CNN, I've worked in some of the worst places in the world. I don't know what put me in that spot, but for UNICEF, for example, I've been in Gaza and the West Bank. I've been to spots in Donetsk that seem even worse than Gaza, in terms of destruction. It's that bad. I catalogued some of the infrastructure damage.

Then the other thing that is happening is that essential infrastructure isn't working in many places, including on both sides of the contact line. One of the roles of the OSCE special monitoring mission to the Ukraine, of course, is facilitation of access. The mission has been working on a weekly basis to facilitate the access of repair workers on both sides of the contact line. This obviously takes a lot of coordination on both sides. They have been able to repair a lot of crucial infrastructure, especially downed power lines, water mains, and that sort of thing. But then what happens is shelling occurs again and this infrastructure is downed once again. I will table it with the clerk later, but the OSCE special monitoring mission does have a thematic report on IDPs, and in there you'll find a catalogue of infrastructure that has been damaged.

The other aspect, of course, is the erosion of freedom and liberties. Also what is happening is what I call a creeping institutionalization by the rebel groups. For example, what they managed to do over the past few months is establish a new Russian curriculum in the schools and new business registration procedures, introduce the ruble and switch to the Moscow time zone.

On the erosion of civil liberties, I cited the report, from five days ago, of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. What it said—it was quoted in the BBC—is that there's a climate of “pervasive impunity” in eastern Ukraine and very few people have been held accountable for a catalogue of alleged summary executions. The OHCHR says that some of the cases could amount to war crimes.

What does this mean—I won't go on too long—for the people who have remained in the occupied regions? Well, a lot of them don't have a choice. They don't have the funds to go back, or many of them are disabled, or many of them just want to stay in their homes. We've met some elderly people who refuse to leave for government-controlled Ukraine. What they do, however, is that they cross over regularly to the government side to collect pensions, to shop for groceries, to get money out of the ATM. Remember that most of the banks are closed in the occupied territory, so they have to go back and forth at great, great risk to their lives. The gentleman there also did mention that many of them have to wait hours, or sometimes a couple of days, to cross the contact line.

Life, in short, to sum up, is terrible. As I've said, it's comparable to some of the most dire places on the planet. As I've said many times, the worst thing that could happen would be the international community, including Canada, averting its gaze from this humanitarian disaster.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

I have a quick final question of Mr. Galkin.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Mustafa Dzhemilev and Mr. Refat Chubarov, and they related that 18 Crimean Tatar leaders were once again arrested last week. What they say is that there's clearly a methodical and meticulous plan that appears to be put in place of ethnocide of the indigenous people of Crimea, the Crimean Tatars.

Would you like to comment on that?

[Aleksandr Galkin]

Thank you for the question.

We mostly work with those who reside on the government-controlled territories, so I think that Mr. Afanasiev may answer this question better, if he's willing to do so. I'm sure about that, but I won't be able to add something more to what Mr. Chubarov and Mr. Dzhemilev have already briefed you. What we've heard from the few Crimean field missions is that indeed there is a deterioration of the situation vis-à-vis the Crimean Tatars in the peninsula. That's my concern generally.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Saroya.

The floor is yours.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for coming out and speaking to us, especially for the three victims. You have our sympathy. I can speak for all Canadians, we are with you any day of the week.

Michael, two years ago, there were no IDPs, and all of a sudden there are two million. It's unbelievable, unimaginable. There are people sleeping in the shelter stations, I think you mentioned, and there's the idea they would never go home. It puts tears in your eyes. My heart beats for these people from the bottom of my heart.

Michael, when you were observing in Ukraine, did you go through difficulties as an international observer? Can you speak to us on that topic?

[Michael Bociurkiw]

Sure. I'll be totally honest with you, and I don't think anything I'm saying has not been in our, for example, OSCE daily report or weekly thematic reports. One of the difficulties is freedom of access for the monitoring mission. This is happening on both sides of the contact line, the Ukrainian side and the side that's controlled by the rebels, but of course, it's much worse on the rebel side.

As most of you know, the Minsk accords require both sides to, for example, move heavy weaponry away from the contact line. There are prescribed distances that they should be removed to. Then what happens is that these heavy weapons are meant to be stored in monitored storage sites, but many times the special monitoring mission has been prevented from going to these storage sites to see if the weapons are still there. In fact, as we speak, over the past few weeks there's been a gradual escalation of violence and a big reason for that is that the heavy weaponry has been moved back into place and is being used.

The other thing is that there have been lots and lots of difficulties accessing the Ukraine-Russia border under rebel control. Believe it or not, the length of the Ukrainian border under rebel control is almost 500 kilometres. That's more than the distance from here to Toronto. On many occasions the mission has been prevented from going to the border, and this is a problem especially at night because a lot of railway lines cross the contact line and no one really knows what types of materials are taken over.

If I can speak from a personal point of view—maybe that was part of your question—working there is very difficult. As I've said, I've worked in many places around the world and the destruction you see...the psycho-social distrust among many of the children is a huge factor right now. It's very bad. Do you know that some families in Donetsk have spent weeks in underground shelters without seeing any daylight, without breathing any fresh air? There's a town called Shyroka Balka near Mariupol and that has been shelled constantly. There's no one there now, but a lot of the residents spent weeks in a shelter there. It's very difficult.

Finally, I should say that I mentioned MH17, and I've just come back from Malaysia by the way. I was there for the second anniversary. The special monitoring mission was the first international presence on the site of the plane crash, 24 hours after that plane came down. I can tell you that the images we saw were absolutely horrific. We were threatened by armed rebel groups, some of them intoxicated, some of them in very vicious types of states of attitude. Yet day after day we did gain more access and were able to get experts there to deal with the site, but on many occasions we were blocked. We were blocked while we were trying to get Malaysians there, and Dutch investigators. In fact, just quickly to wrap up, the Dutch have been trying to finish off their criminal investigation, but they have been blocked, especially in Luhansk, to do things like, for example, triangulate cellphone tower communications among the rebels.

It's a very difficult operating environment, but I'm glad that Canada is part of the mission to document what is going on and to facilitate access.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

What would you like to see Canada and international society do to help? What sort of help do you need for the IDPs, especially in Ukraine?

[Michael Bociurkiw]

First of all I would like Canada to continue support to the special monitoring mission. It plays a crucial role. It's helped a great deal to alleviate suffering on both sides of the contact line. At the moment I think we have almost 30 Canadian monitors there. I think we could go a bit higher, and Canada should maintain, if not increase, its financial commitment to the OSCE. It does good work there.

I did mention a couple of ideas, such as encouraging the private sector to open up more internship opportunities for young Ukrainians and have more scholarship opportunities.

I mentioned the visa problems. I understand this has been alleviated. I have been told that under the previous government the reason there was a visa clampdown was because that government believed that people from Donetsk and Luhansk were coming to Canada as visitors and overstaying. I don't think the actions of a few bad apples are a reason to have a blanket clampdown on visitor visas from Ukraine. If anything, now is the time to allow them more access to Canada.

Finally, among that huge group of IDPs there are a lot of professionals, such as journalists, IT experts, and even fashion designers. I had hoped to wear my Ukrainian-made suit today. It was designed by a fashion designer in Donetsk who is incarcerated, but Air Canada lost my baggage so I couldn't wear my Ukrainian suit for you.

Many professionals, as I think all of us have indicated, have had problems seeking opportunities now that they have left their places of residence. Perhaps there could be a special temporary program in place to help IDPs, even from the professional class, to come to Canada to gain more experience and also to contribute to Canadian society.

We have a domestic overseas worker program for Filipinos. It's targeting a special country. Why can't the same be made for Ukraine, at least on a temporary basis?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Absolutely, thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Galkin. You are a director of a charity called the Right to Protection. From your side, what would you like to see from Canada? How can Canadians help from your charity's point of view?

[Aleksandr Galkin]

I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Would you please repeat the question?