The Association “Promo-LEX” said torture in the Transnistrian region is a norm. It noted that it continues to receive complains from relatives of the victims of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment used by the representatives of the Transnistrian militia. The Association also expresses its dissatisfaction with the inaction of the constitutional authorities and the regional administration that continues to defy the human rights, IPN reports.
“Promo-LEX” gives as example the case of Lipovchenco. During over three years and a half, the mother of Alexandr Lipovchenco, a Ukrainian young man native of Dnestrovsk who was sentenced to three years in jail for extremism, has warned the local and international authorities about the unfair trial and use of torture against her son, but all in vain. Ecaterina Lipovchenco said that her son was found guilty because the KGB investigators found a text that was considered to be extremist in character among his notebooks. Her son does not consider himself to blame and regularly goes on hunger strike. Owing to his diseases and to the hunger strikes, the state of health of Alexandr Lipovcehnco has worsened.
This went on hunger strike first when he was arrested on July 7, 2015. He periodically abandoned this form of protest owing to weakness and to the pressure exerted by the penitentiary’s administration. In the period, he lost weight, while his diseases were exacerbated. In a meeting on April 14, 2016, his mother saw him exhausted. He had yellow spots on the body and could barely move his legs. The jail’s doctors assured her that his state of health is out of danger; he is under supervision and receives medical preparations. But these refuse any medical examination outside the prison.
According to “Promo-LEX”, the Tiraspol court on March 28, 2016 sentenced Alexandr Lipovchenco to three years and six months in jail for a mention he made in an old notebook – “Order is possible in Transnistria only if the UN forces are introduced here”. The judgment was passed in his absence because, as the judge said, he talked too much.
On April 7, 8 and 14, 2016, Alexandr was punched and kicked in the kidneys by guards of Penitentiary No. 3. They also took him to a lockup room because this refused to eat. There Alexandru had to sleep on the concrete floor and thus got pneumonia. Lipovchenco is held in a cell together with eight persons who smoke. He does not smoke and this influences him negatively. The prisoners are taken out for a walk for one hour a day only. The water is undrinkable. He can take a shower once a week. He has lived in such conditions for nine months.
