The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine draws the attention of the international community to the decision of the Russian government to initiate the denunciation of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
This step is actually a confession of a crime – the systematic practice of torture and the desire to avoid responsibility for gross violations of human rights. Modern Russia is a territory of lawlessness and humiliation of human dignity. The decision to withdraw from the Convention against Torture only consolidates this reality and finally places Russia among the countries for which the value of human life and dignity is zero.
Unlike most other international treaties in this area, which rely mainly on declarations, reporting or periodic reviews, the Convention includes a preventive mechanism of both regular and unannounced visits to places of detention by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (ECPT/CPT) to directly verify the conditions of detention and treatment of people.
Since February 2022, Ukraine has systematically insisted and continues to insist on the exclusion of Russia from all cooperation mechanisms within the Council of Europe. This is due to the deep awareness of the fact that Russia has turned into a totalitarian state with a repressive apparatus that systematically violates human rights, undermines democracy, and disregards the rule of law.
Only the procedural provisions of the Convention, which do not provide for the forced exclusion of a State Party, allowed Russia to formally remain a party to this important international legal document. At the same time, Russia was actually destroying the mechanism of the Convention: it did not take any real part in the work of the ECtHR and did not allow the Committee’s experts to enter its territory to study and document the situation with torture.
This fits into the broader practice of the Russian Federation of blocking independent access, in particular, the denial of full access of the International Committee of the Red Cross to places of detention, including places of detention of prisoners of war. All this indicates that Russia is systematically “closing” any channels of international control, trying to hide from the world the terrible truth about the system of torture created in the country, and regaining its notorious reputation as a “prison empire.”
It was Ukraine’s consistent political, legal, and public pressure in the Council of Europe and other international formats, systematic documentation of crimes, and mobilisation of partners that deprived the Russian Federation of the opportunity to imitate “cooperation” with torture prevention mechanisms and led to the formalisation of the desire to avoid independent control.
A country that uses torture as an integral part of its policy cannot be a party to the Convention, which should unite states governed by the rule of law. The responsibility of the aggressor state for numerous crimes, including torture, must be unavoidable. Ukraine insists on the prompt use of international mechanisms for accountability and calls on the international community to act actively and without delay.
