Students hand professor over to security service for making pro-separatist statements
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/students-hand-professor-over-to-security-service-for-making-pro-separatist
The peculiar nature of the conflict in Ukraine, which has not officially been declared a war but has now killed nearly 7,000 people, has produced a strange result: an air of suspicion along the front line so strong it prompts ordinary residents to hunt for “separatists” among their own neighbors and friends.
On Aug. 13, the Security Service of Ukraine announced it had issued an official warning to a university professor in the western city of Zhytomyr after his own students ratted him out for expressing support for Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine.
SBU spokeswoman Irina Martynyuk said in a statement that “if (the professor) repeats these actions he will be detained and his actions will be prosecuted under the Criminal Code.”
[…]
Alexander Demchenko, the head of the “Stop Separatism” volunteer group, has taken the initiative a step further and begun serving as a go-between for ordinary residents and the SBU.
“People living near the front are often afraid to call the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) or just can’t get through, and some don’t even know where to send such information. My partner and I have been collecting complaints (about separatists) for a year now and passing them on to the SBU,” Demchenko said.
When he first started, he said, most of the calls came from Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv, with several tips a day, whereas now most calls come from Kyiv.
In one case, he said, a man had called to complain about his mother-in-law defending Russia’s actions over dinner.
[…]
Not everyone is supportive of the widespread initiative to track down separatist collaborators, however.
In an editorial published by Inforesist.org on Aug. 14, Semyon Gluzman, a former Soviet dissident and the head of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association, warned that people could abuse the hotline to settle personal scores.
“With us, separatism is starting to be rooted out and persecuted using the recipe of Yozhov and Beria. (Nikolai Yozhov and Lavrentiy Beria, two heads of the Soviet secret police under dictator Josef Stalin). Publicly calling for the population to spot those who are not content (with the current situation). I would like to ask one question: what percentage of people living in shelled, starving and socially deprived villages in Donbas are content? And what percentage of the so-called content people wouldn’t use the opportunity to tattle on “separatists” to settle scores with their previous enemies, their annoying neighbor or ex-husband who doesn’t want to pay alimony?”
