Interview with Pavel Lisyansky, Director of the Eastern Human Rights Group

DFRLab: Why did you decide to investigate this issue?

Lisyansky: Ever since my university years, I’ve been involved with the protection of human rights, including juvenile detention. Starting in the summer of 2016, information came to us about prison labor being used in illegal mines in the LNR. It was then that we first started to investigate this topic. People began to ask questions about help with this problem, and so we decided to help people.

How did you find information about the prison colonies and prisoners?

Through relatives who appealed to us and open sources of information, we began to analyze the events taking place [in the prison colonies of the LNR], and then we got into contact with the normal workers of the penitentiary system who disclosed some new facts to us regarding forced labor. And as a third source of information, we communicated with the prisoners. With the help of relatives, we verified the identity of every prisoner with whom we spoke. Relatives did not tell us about the forced labor. They talked more about the beatings and the prisoners’ inability to be transferred to territory controlled by Ukraine. Now, after two years, they have become accustomed to the fact that their relatives in prison are working for free. And even consider it normal.

In fact, the information was gathered up bit-by-bit, and initially we shared it primarily with the UN, OSCE, and Red Cross, but they don’t talk about this problem and have not raised it, and so we decided to act independently.

Did you use any sort of information from “open sources,” such as online video clips from YouTube, photographs from Vkontakte, and so on?

We used any sort of open source available in order to understand who has worked with this problem before us and what was achieved, in order to understand what negative experiences came from it, and so on. We have tried to find any sort of clue in order to understand this situation with more detail and more objectively!

What outcomes have you achieved after the publication of your report last week?

After the publication of our report, this problem has generated a public outcry throughout the information space. Journalists and human rights defenders working on a higher level than us have become interested in this problem, and international organizations have again begun to look for solutions regarding this issue.