“Injustice in Ukraine: the case of Yulia Tymoshenko – Europe’s Aung San Suu Kyi ?”

Eugenia Tymoshenko

Yulia Tymoshenko’s daughter

After the Human Rights Council’s session that will review Ukraine’s human rights record (streamed online from 9am at http://www.un.org/webcast/unhrc/) and just 4 days before the elections in Ukraine, this press conference will focus on the regime’s persecution of Yulia Tymoshenko – leader of the Orange Revolution and the only woman to have risen to Prime Ministerial office in former Soviet states.

Her daughter Eugenia will describe – as a first hand witness – the brutal treatment of her mother. Geoffrey Robertson QC, formerly a « distinguished jurist » member of the UN’s Internal Justice Council and first President of Sierra Leone war crimes court will explain how she was convicted by puppet judges after a show-trial. Sergei Vlasenko, her trial lawyer, will tell of the impossibility of fair trial in Ukraine’s politicised courts and Amal Alamuddin, a former senior prosecutor for the UN-sponsored tribunal for Lebanon and a member of the UN’s peace mission for Syria, will expose the prosecutorial malpractice in the cases against Ms Tymoshenko.

How can Ukraine be allowed to remain in the Council of Europe when it flouts the fundamentals of democracy ? After short addresses, questions will be invited and interviews may be arranged.