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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Ukraine on Thursday for having committed “numerous” violations during the repression of protests in Maidan Square between November 2013 and February 2014, and held that the State was “responsible” for the murder of a protester.
“The Court considers, among other things, that the authorities deliberately inflicted ill-treatment and that the state is responsible for the murder of a protester,” the European court said in a statement.
The judges unanimously found that the authorities “deliberately tried to disrupt the peaceful demonstrations” by resorting to “excessive violence and illegal arrests.”
They also estimated that a large part of the ill-treatment detected, which sometimes amounted to “torture”, was inflicted as part of a “deliberate strategy by the authorities”.
The protests mobilized up to 800,000 people and led to the removal of President Víktor Yanukovych and several constitutional changes.
Faced with the popular mobilization, the Ukrainian government had sent “thousands of police and soldiers,” said the court, which recalls that these events had caused “more than 100 deaths and thousands of wounded.”
The court ordered Ukraine to pay the 38 plaintiffs amounts ranging between 1,200 and 30,000 euros (1,500 and 36,000 dollars) for moral and material damages.