“We need anti-aircraft systems. We need other types of military equipment to protect our airspace,” Matviychuk told AFP in Stockholm. “We must prevent further damage to critical civilian infrastructure,” she added.
Matviychuk heads the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), which was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize together with the Russian organization Memorial and Belarusian politician and human rights activist Ales Byalyatsky.
It was “a strange situation for me” and a “clear sign” that something was wrong with the “entire international system” when a human rights lawyer had to ask for anti-aircraft defenses, Matviychuk said.
The CCL president complained that international law was no longer effective. “I no longer have a legal instrument that can stop Russian atrocities because Russia is publicly ignoring international law and all decisions of international organizations,” said the 39-year-old.
Ukraine also urgently needs humanitarian aid to “get through this very harsh winter”. She herself has just been without electricity and heating in her apartment in Kiev for three days.
According to Matviychuk, the CCL, founded in 2007, pursues the “ambitious goal of documenting every war crime” in Ukraine. “We now have a database of more than 24,000 war crimes,” she said.
The work is exhausting, both because of the efforts to collect information and because of the hardships of its employees. “We are documenting human suffering and it is very difficult,” said Matviychuk.
However, she wonders for whom her organization is documenting these war crimes, according to the human rights lawyer. “Who offers a chance for justice for hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes?”
The war has reduced people to numbers because the sheer number of atrocities is overwhelming. “We have to give people back their names and only justice can do that,” Matviychuk demanded. The Nobel Peace Prize will be officially awarded in Oslo on December 10.
(SDA)