“In the pine forest, the scent of resin and rotting corpses mixed and vibrated. Bodies with their hands tied and with broken arms and legs are coming from all over the place.”
Traces of war crimes such as confinement, torture, murder and burial by Russian forces during the occupation of Izum, a city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, which the Ukrainian army recovered after more than five months, poured out. The Russian military also operated prisons for torturing civilians who were cooperative with the Ukrainian army. The Guardian, a British daily, reported that 445 bodies had been found in the Izum mass burial site by the 17th. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said there was “evidence that the Russians fired guns for fun” at the buried people. There are also observations that it could be a more catastrophic tragedy than the ‘secondary massacre’ outside the capital Kiiu, which shocked the world in March this year.
○ Body excavation site ‘like hell’… odor vibration
Russia, which invaded Ukraine on February 24, started air raids on Izum in March and retreated last week, five months after taking full control in April. Izum residents claimed, “It is impossible to describe in words how many people went missing during that time.”
Ukrainian authorities have discovered a mass burial site of bodies in a forest outside Izum and are working to excavate their remains. After the discovery of 40 bodies on the 16th, bodies have continued to appear. Many of the bodies found in the ground with wooden crosses had their hands tied or ropes wrapped around their necks. Most of them are believed to be civilians. Ukrainian prosecutors said the body had “broken arms and legs and contained traces of torture”. A ‘blue and yellow’ bracelet, symbolizing the Ukrainian flag, was worn on the wrist of a woman found dead.
Local residents said that “some of the bodies were people killed in Russian airstrikes.” “On May 16, his wife was shot and killed by Russian military cluster bullets on the street,” one man cried. Cluster bombs are so cruel that their use has been banned in more than 100 countries around the world. The man found the body of his wife in a burial site in the woods. CNN in the United States described, “Even after a heavy rain fell in the forest, the smell of the body did not wash away.”
○ Survivor “Electrical Torture”… international anger
Izum survivors testified that the Russian army tortured the residents. Maxim Maximou, 50, a publisher who was taken away by the Russian military twice in March and September, said he was subjected to electric torture in an underground detention center at the police station. “The soldiers called me ‘Ukrainian spy’ and sat me down in a chair, and they put clips in the shape of crocodile teeth on my fingers,” Maximou said. It was connected to an old-fashioned Soviet field telephone machine,” he said. “The torture began as a soldier quickly turned the handle of his machine. My pulse was beating like crazy and my eyes and ears were deaf. He then fell,” he said. The torture lasted about 40 minutes. “Some soldiers said they came from Belarus,” he told The Guardian.
President Zelensky said in a video address to the nation on the 16th, “Russia leaves death everywhere. Bucha, Mariupol and now unfortunately Izum. Russia should be held accountable for this.”
The international community has called for an immediate investigation. The European Union (EU) chair country, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipafsky, called for the establishment of a special International Court of Justice on the 17th, saying, “In the 21st century, such an attack on civilians is unimaginably abhorrent.” “The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) team will move to Izum as soon as possible, and a war crime investigation team will follow,” CNN reported.
Reporter Lee Eun-taek [email protected]
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