UN Report: Human Rights Violations Permeate Conflict in Eastern Ukraine  

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is condemning pervasive arbitrary detention and torture by both government and Russian-backed separatists in the seven-year eastern Ukraine conflict.  The condemnation comes in a report submitted Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The analysis by the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine finds around 4,000 of those detained have been subjected to torture or ill-treatment in both government and rebel-controlled territories over the past seven years.  The analysis is based on over 1,300 conflict-related cases since the war in the breakaway eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk began in 2014.    Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif says the prevalence of the torture and ill-treatment was highest at the initial stages of the conflict and has since decreased.