A human rights activist has accused the Ministry of the Interior of red tape over its refusal to accept a complaint against Klymenko
This is stated in a public statement by Eduard Bagirov.
Eduard Bagirov stated that on 25 May he went to the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine to personally submit a statement addressed to Minister Ihor Klymenko.
According to the human rights activist, he expected the standard procedure: the document was to be accepted, registered and forwarded to the appropriate department. Instead, as Bagirov claims, the submission of the application turned into a “bureaucratic game of ping-pong”.
He explained that he was initially given one internal telephone number; after calling that number, he was directed to another, and then to yet another. After several redirects, according to Bagirov, staff at the document management department informed him that they had their own procedure for handling applications.
ThePublic submitted a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
What is the human rights activist’s complaint?
Bagirov believes that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has effectively created artificial barriers to submitting an official complaint.
He refers to the Law of Ukraine “On Citizens’ Appeals” and emphasises that a person’s right to submit an appeal to a state body cannot depend on a schedule convenient for officials or internal rules.
According to the human rights activist, citizens should not be forced to go through a telephone ordeal instead of a normal document submission process.
“The law is the same for everyone,” Bagirov noted in his appeal to the Minister of Internal Affairs.
If a person comes to a central government body with an official application, the state must ensure a clear procedure for its acceptance. This is particularly true during wartime, when trust in institutions and citizens’ access to the authorities are of practical, rather than merely symbolic, importance.
Bagirov states that instead of assistance, he encountered a closed-door policy, redirection and officials’ confidence in their own impunity. This, he says, is the main problem – a system in which citizens are forced to adapt to the internal convenience of the institution.
What is known about Bagirov
Eduard Bagirov publicly positions himself as a human rights defender. The public description on his page states that he is a citizen of Ukraine and has headed a human rights organisation since 2001. The name of the organisation is not specified in the information provided.
In this instance, he acted both as a citizen attempting to submit a complaint to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and as a human rights defender who identified a problem regarding public access to a state body.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs’ position
At the time of writing, the editorial team had not found any public response from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to Eduard Bagirov’s statement.
ThePublic is ready to publish the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ position should it be received.
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