Amnesty International Head in Ukraine Pokalchuk Criticizes Head Office’s Report on AFU Actions
Oksana Pokalchuk, head of the Ukrainian office of Amnesty International, has criticized the head office’s report, in which the international human rights organization accused the Ukrainian military of placing bases in residential areas, in particular in schools.
Pokalchuk published her post on her Facebook page, Ukrainian News Agency reports.
She said the publication was created based on data collected by foreign researchers at Amnesty International's global office Crisis Response Department.
"The Ukrainian office was not involved in the preparation or writing of the text of the publication. And, unfortunately, already at the initial stage of the development of this report, we came to a standstill, where the arguments of our team on the inadmissibility and incompleteness of such material were not taken into account," she wrote.
According to Pokalchuk, representatives of the Ukrainian office of the organization tried to prevent the publication and distribution of the material.
"We asked the authors to send us all versions of the material in advance (unfortunately, this did not happen), we persuaded them to ask for an official comment from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, but, unfortunately, they did not provide enough time to receive a response and published this study without their comment," she said.
In addition, the Ukrainian office categorically refused to translate into Ukrainian and publish this press release on its website.
"We are very sorry that even after all the possible arguments "against" we were not heard anyway," Pokalchuk added.
Earlier, Amnesty International published a material that accused the Ukrainian military of placing bases in residential areas, in particular in schools and hospitals.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged Amnesty International not to look for a fake balance between the Russia aggressor country and Ukraine defending itself against it, but to tell the world the truth about Russia.