“Employees of Territorial Recruitment Centers have no right to check citizens’ documents,” the ombudsman said

Employees of Territorial Recruitment Centers have no right to check Ukrainians’ documents.

This was stated by Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets in an interview with the German public media company Deutsche Welle.

“Very often we are asked to physically come to a TRC and record a human rights violation. And often it ends with us indeed recording such violations. I would like to draw attention to the fact that only law enforcement bodies can check documents – the police, the border guard service, the National Guard. The military have no right to check documents and have no right to restrict the rights and freedoms of a citizen of Ukraine,” Lubinets said.

According to Lubinets, he was shocked by the recent death of a young man who had managed to tell his lawyer that he was being taken to a TRC, had voluntarily agreed to be mobilized, and then died the next day under unexplained circumstances. Traces of beatings were found on his body.

The ombudsman also commented on the improper use of body cameras by draft officers.

“As of now, we do not see that this has helped in their work. It often happens that during problematic incidents the body cameras either were not working or were absent. This needs to be improved,” Lubinets noted.

Let us recall that at the beginning of the year Lubinets reported that TRCs had begun to violate human rights more frequently during mobilization activities.

Earlier, Verkhovna Rada deputy Iryna Friz reported that draft officers are prohibited from working without body cameras and while wearing balaclavas.