The UN Workplace of the Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights Tuesday condemned audio recordings that emerged over the weekend, which seem to point out figures related to either side of the warfare in Ukraine ordering combatants to not take prisoners of warfare or else to execute these captured.
As initially reported by the Kiev Unbiased, Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin posted a Telegram audio recording on April 23 wherein he declared, “We are going to kill everybody on the battlefield. Take no extra prisoners of the warfare!” Prigozhin mentioned this in response to a different recording posted to a Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel, which allegedly to contained “intercepted” audio of a Ukrainian armed forces member ordering the abstract execution of a captured Wagner Group mercenary. The authenticity of the recording just isn’t verified.
Executing prisoners hors de fight (out of fight) constitutes a war crime below the Geneva Conventions, as do “give no quarter” fight orders and declarations. The UN Human Rights Workplace’s press launch known as on Russian and Ukrainian authorities to “adjust to their obligations below worldwide legislation to research the statements in these recordings and to establish and prosecute these accountable.” It additionally known as on army commanders and different superiors to difficulty “clear and unambiguous orders” to respect worldwide legislation obligations concerning prisoners of warfare and individuals hors de fight.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been marked by human rights abuses, together with these in the direction of prisoners of warfare. Final week, a former Wagner mercenary admitted to killing and torturing prisoners of warfare all through his six months of combating in a phone interview. He described battlefield executions en masse, together with the killing of youngsters, and recounted an episode wherein Ukrainian POWs had been killed by “tossing grenades” into the ditch the place they had been held.
Different just lately reported warfare crimes and human rights violations within the battle embody the alleged unlawful detention and torture of Kherson residents by Russian forces, in addition to compelled conscriptions,attacks towards civilians and the compelled deportation of Ukrainian youngsters which led to an ICC arrest warrant towards Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Picture supply: jurist.org
