These are protests about hope, not about NABU
These protests are not about NABU. These protests are about hope. That the war, all the trials and losses we are going through were not in vain. And we will be able to return to the European civilized space where everyone's rights are protected and the government is accountable and controlled by the people.
It is useless to blame people for not reading the draft law. They got the gist of it. The work of anti-corruption bodies leaves much to be desired. In particular, we, human rights activists, have a lot of complaints against them. But this problem is not fixed by putting them under the control of the office.
The adopted draft law is not about NABU. It is about the future, at least as the government sees it. I will leave the motives behind, but war dictates its own logic. And this logic is the opposite of democratization. We have a rather difficult task – to pass between these two logics.
The government's communications leave no illusions, but I'm still trying to explain. Our strength is in what the logic of war considers a weakness. A small Russia cannot withstand an attack by a large one. Our strength is not in the presidential vertical, but in grassroots democracy and initiative, in the subjectivity of people and their belief that your efforts make sense.
Now to the content of the amendments. The presidential draft law does not fix everything. In addition to subordination of NABU and SAPO, the hastily voted draft law returns pre-Maidan powers to the Prosecutor General, which destroys the procedural independence of investigators and prosecutors, allows searches without a court order, etc .
Therefore, it would be important to add to the demands about NABU, SAPO, and BES the requirement to deprive the Office of the Prosecutor General of unjustifiably broad powers. This has already been done. It is these amendments that, if we fail to slip between the two logics, will overtake every active citizen of our country.
And the last thing. 11 years ago, when the then government made a decision that deprived Ukrainians of hope for the future, the youth of that time came out to protest. The Maidan was brutally dispersed by the Berkut: young men and women were dragged by their hair across the square, kicked on the asphalt, and had their heads smashed with truncheons.
I remember these events very well, because it was then that my team and I launched the Euromaidan SOS initiative and started working 24×7 to provide legal and other assistance to persecuted protesters.
The young people of that time were also sincere and real. Some of them joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine some time later. Many of them gave their lives for the values that led them to come out to the mass protests in November 2013 .
I just want to record that all these efforts made sense. Because the sincere and beautiful young people who have now come out en masse with these fantastic inscriptions on cardboard do not go through brutal beatings and police brutality.
Freedom is a fragile thing, and it may not always be so, but at this particular moment in history, we need to record this important achievement of the last eleven years.
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