Kiev : A UN envoy said here Friday that he has not seen any evidence of human rights violations in Ukraine that requires military intervention.
“In Ukraine, there is no widespread human rights violation, which requires military actions,” Xinhua quoted Ivan Simonovic, UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, as saying.
There were cases of illegal arrests and harassment in Ukraine’s autonomous republic of Crimea, which became the epicentre of an ongoing tension in the East European country, said Simonovic, who is currently in this country to evaluate the human rights situation.
The unmarked armed groups of people, who are “not natives of the Crimean region”, are concentrated in the Black Sea peninsula, the envoy said, without giving further details.
The UN Human Rights Office team was unable to visit Crimea, Simonovic said. And Crimean Prime Minister Sergey Aksenov, who is the leader of the pro-Russian movement in the peninsula, refused to speak with the UN envoys via the phone.
Simonovic also expressed his concern over the high number of missing people in Ukraine since the beginning of the anti-government protests last November and urged Kiev to thoroughly and impartially investigate the cases of human rights abuses.
Simonovic went to Ukraine last week on the instructions of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to assess the human rights situation in the region. During his stay in Ukraine, Simonovic held meetings with the local authorities, as well as with representative of pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian civil movements.
The UN human rights mission is expected to stay in Ukraine till March 18.