What the early June 2020 reports showed about law enforcement
Two reports from 4 June 2020, one from Dnipropetrovsk region and one from Crimea, point to different problems in how law is applied.
What did two reports from the first week of June 2020 reveal about the rule of law? By 10 June 2020, both had been public for several days, and they concerned very different failings.
On 4 June 2020, a gang of police officers was exposed in Pavlohrad, in Dnipropetrovsk region. It was organised by Dmytro Serdiuk, the head of the local police station. The case concerned a unit of the police itself, and the person accused of organising it was the officer in charge of it.
The same day, a court in Russian-controlled Crimea jailed a Jehovah's Witness for six years for practising a religion that is outlawed in the territory. The sentence concerned freedom of religion rather than crime.
The two cases sit in different jurisdictions and should not be merged into one story. Together, however, they show two ways in which institutions of law enforcement and justice can fail: from within, when officers are accused of organising criminal activity, and through the courts, when belief is punished with prison.
