 And welcome to Cooper Union. What's happening with human rights around the world on Thing Tech Live Broadcasting from our downtown studio on Honolulu Hawaii in Moana, New York. I'm your host, Joshua Cooper. The title of today's episode is World Press Freedom Day in Warsaw, Ukraine Media Keeping Truth and Hope Alive. Today I'm so fortunate to be joined by Olga who's working with the NGO Media Initiative for Human Rights as the co-founder. She was making sure that the world would be aware of what's truly happening. Olga, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me today. It's very important to pay attention to the events in Ukraine and what's happening now. So it's my pleasure to be here, thank you. We know it is World Press Freedom Day. Can you share with us why it's even so much more important in Ukraine right now with what is happening? Okay. You know, according to the official information, more than 80 crimes were committed against journalists since the February in Ukraine. They were committed by Russian troops and unfortunately 23 journalists were killed to Americans are among them. And in the ongoing war, the danger for journalists and for press is increasing, you know, and but those people are still trying to tell truth to the world about what is going on in Ukraine. So in this day, I think we have to talk about the dangers of this work and to say that war is the best thing, but it is very, very dangerous for journalists and for those who are working on the war zone now. Very true. And it's very exciting that you created this NGO, Media Initiative for Human Rights. What was the impetus for that? You know, it is the NGO, this NGO consists from the former journalist who had to become a human rights defender once again because of war. I'd like to emphasize that the war in Ukraine started in 2014. And I used to be a journalist on that time and I went to the war zone. But you know, when you go to the front line and see what's going on there, you see the suffering of the people, you see how civilians are killed. And so when you can't just tell a story and go ahead, you have to help those people, even especially if it is children or people who can't help themselves. And so I saw these stories and I tried to do more for them. I tried to help two relatives of kidnapped people to find them. I tried to tell more about these stories and so on. And then I came back to Kiev and talked to my friend and told her that it is like mind blowing when you are near the front line and then you come back to peaceful cities and see how people just walk in, just sitting in the coffees and so on. And it is too difficult to tell truth about the war in this situation. And she told me that humanity creating the way how to talk about the war. It's international humanitarian law. And when you try to talk with people about the war, according to these red lines, what is good and what is bad during the war. It is easier. And so we decided to create this media initiative for human rights. And we, first of all, we were trying to highlight to cover this situation with the human rights violations in occupied Crimea and Donbas. Then when we had already a massive of information, we had to do something with it. And we started to advocate the some solutions for Ukrainian government or international community. And also we've done in journalistic investigations which were helpful to our Prosecutor's Office and we, for example, we investigate the enforced disappearances in Crimea in 2014 and or the crimes committed. Actually, we investigated the crimes committed on both sides and unfortunately from Ukrainian side as well. Ukrainian troops in the 2014 also where sometimes they had committed some war crimes. Of course, it's not like the scale is different with Russia and Ukraine. It is not systematic, but there was some crimes. And it is very complicated to tell about crimes committed by our troops to our society. Our society sometimes are not prepared for it. And of course, they don't want to hear about these crimes. But we tried to do this. And after that, different laws were dropped laws were like in our parliament. And so this laws helped to make this impunity from the both sides such a big thing, yeah? So after that, so we've done a lot. We've done a lot and we were prepared for this large scale invasion. And we had an experience how to deal with all these war crimes and crimes against humanity. And now we are dealing with these crimes in the different regions of Ukraine. You know, this awful occupation of Kiev region, Chernihiv-Tsume, and our last investigation is about the enforced disappearances in Kiev region. When this region was occupied, we knew that some people were taking hostages there and they were taken and kept in some facilities. But after the liberation of these regions, those people just disappeared. We didn't know where they are. And we investigate that they were forced to go to Russian prisons through Belarus. And we identified more than 200 names of just civilians who are taking as the hostages now in Russian prisons. And nobody knows what to do, how to release them. There are no instruments or mechanism how to release them because there are no officials in Russia whom we can to talk to. So now we are talking to international community trying to find some mechanism to release those people. One more direction of our organization is the human rights of servicemen, military personnel. And you know, for now we have a number of more than 3,000 prisoners of war. Ukrainian soldiers and officers were kept in Russia. Many of them are wounded and you know, the terrible situation in Mariupol with Ukrainian Marines. And once again, we have no instruments to release them, but we hope at least that they won't be tortured by Russians because they have enough information about the tortures and the tortures of our soldiers and the treatment is not proper. And they have no medical aid, they have no even, sometimes they have no even food and water. So this is what, maybe it's not a topic for morning to talk, but sorry for this. I hope that your mood for the day will be okay after my story. Well, Olga, I thank you so much and we appreciate your courage and bravery. The initiative you're sharing really ensures that the world knows what's happening through documentation and constant coverage of the conflict. I also appreciate you giving that full perspective that it didn't all begin in February. Many people have forgotten that aspect. So your documentation of the dastardly actions that have happened the entire time, but also your commitment to honesty to make sure that you focus on the rule of law. And it sounds like what you're doing now really does uphold the Geneva conventions on both sides and make sure that everyday people who are caught up in this conflict are protected as much as possible. So that is so important. And as the world commemorates International Press Freedom Day to honor the rule of the fourth estate, in a way you're speaking truth to power, you're also upholding the freedom of expression. And so you are through your daily actions keeping truth alive in the Ukraine. So it's okay. It's a little after breakfast anyway. And I think more people appreciate being fed or by you the truth on those spoons of what needs to be done. So we thank you about sharing all that you can with us today. In a way, maybe you could share some of the most important issues regarding war crimes that you've documented so far that the world needs to know about. Yeah, you know, our Prosecutor General's Office opened more than 10,000 proceedings about war crimes in Ukraine. It is the large scale and very systematic like method, you know, work committing war crimes is a method of war for Russians. They use it like instrument to break the resistance of the Ukrainians. And our organization is dealing with, as I mentioned, with enforced disappearance, especially of active people of visible people in different regions who can be a leader of protest or something like that. For example, in Khriston region, more than 50 people were kidnapped and we have no information where they are and what happened to them. It is like civic activists. It is a major of towns and cities. It can be veterans or... Even teachers and heads of schools, they are also kidnapped and we don't know where they are, unfortunately. So, and as I told you about the situation in Kiev region, the same we are investigating for now the situation in Sumo region where also a lot of people were abducted and transferred to Russia. And as we see the same practice in different region, we can talk about the general policy of Russia. I think that those decisions were made in Kremlin. It was not the decision of one commander or so on. The practice is very similar in different regions of different units of Russian troops. So, as we see, they tried to commit genocide because they tried to kill as many people as they can. They tried to scare the whole society by the awful torturings, by the public killing and so on. And this is, you know, as I've said already, we were prepared for the Russian invasion because we have been dealing with the war since 2014, since Crimea and Donbass. But I think it's too much pain for our society, for Ukraine, at all. We even couldn't imagine that they have made such atrocities, you know. So that's why what we have to do now is to document as many cases as we can and then to decide what to do with it. Maybe we prepared with lawyers, we prepared some submissions to international criminal court, but they won't take the whole situation in Ukraine. They can take to the intention some episodes, but not the whole situation. And the lawyers are talking now about the creation of special mechanism to bring Putin and his regime to responsibility. It can be like a special tribunal for him and his like the authorities here for Russia. What the mechanism will be, nobody knows for now, but the discussions is going on. And I hope that in the nearest future, we will understand what facts do we need to provide for this mechanism because we are trying to document for now as much as we can. It is very difficult because in the occupied regions, there are no internet connection, no mobile connection. And we have very less information from those regions. I'm talking about the southern regions of Ukraine, the Crimea, Firstone region, Azerbaijan region and also Eastern regions like the next and Lugansk region. And those hostages were taken previously before the Russian full-scale invasion. They are also still in prisoners. And I want to remind you about political prisoners on the territory of Russian Federation about Crimean Tatars who were detained for the last time. And the activists of Kisbutar Hvir, Crimean Tatars organization, which is forbidden in Russia, but was allowed in Ukraine. And after the occupation of Crimea, a lot of activists from this organization were detained. And one more thing I want to pay attention to is the forced deportation of Ukrainians to Russia We can talk about the number, about more than 500,000, which were deported to Russia because they have no any chance to survive. Russian troops didn't allow people to go to the territory under Ukrainian control. And they had to go to Russia. And after that, they went through the so-called filtration camps. And after that, they forced them to go to very depressive regions of Russia on the Far East and so on. And people there have no documents, have no alternative information about what is going on. What is going on in the world, they can listen only to Russian propaganda and they have no access even to the cells to call to their relatives to tell them where they are. So the situation is awful, but it is not new in the history because previously during the Soviet Union Soviet authorities had been doing the same. You know that they deported the Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian, Polish people and even the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 was recognized as a genocide by many countries in Ukraine as well. So the practices are the same as it was in the Soviet Union. Moscow nowadays is like a continuum of the Soviet Union and this state has to be collapsed. I understand and I'm here now at the UN permanent form on Indigenous issues and we've been working with the Crimean Tatars for over two decades and they did document how life got even worse since the invasion of Crimea and they also then gave insights to what you're now experiencing and the sad part and what you've been raising as well besides the Crimean Tatar Indigenous people's issue is that it seems there's a national plan and a program of action that's being sent from the Kremlin that uses Geneva Conventions to violate each and every one of the articles to inflict as much harm and try to break the resistance of the Ukrainian people and the point that you brought really highlights something that didn't get enough attention where many people were not able to flee and go to a safe space in Ukraine but it is so important to document what's going on so that the world's aware and how people's human rights are being violated. I've even heard that there is an attempt to crowdsource digital evidence of war crime where everyday people are being able to share this information and so we thank you for all the work that you've been doing in that capacity. Can you share in some ways how you've been able to use the information so far and to move things forward as well? Our enduro is the member of the 5 a.m. coalition. It is a coalition of Ukrainian human rights organizations. We have already 27 members and we just united to document the war crimes and crimes against humanity because the capacity of each separate organization is not enough for the such a scale of the crimes. So we joined together to do this and we have different directions. Some organizations are focusing on documentation, documenting of the crimes and some who have a lot of lawyers and professional who are specialized in the different judicial issues. They are focusing on the preparing of submissions to the ICC, to the European Court and they mostly are discussing this issue about the special tribunal for the Russians. And so as for us, for our media initiative for human rights, we have monitors in different regions. We are talking to people interviewing them. For example, yesterday and today, our monitor have been working in the Tizia where people from Azotil plant came and still we were interviewing them about the awful conditions which are there. And it is quite difficult because after this shocking situation not every person will talk to you. And you have to create some special approach to talk to those people after those situations. Sometimes their relatives were killed on their eyes. Sometimes they are wounded. Sometimes this may be persons after sexual violence and all those awful things that are committed by Russians. But our NGO has a trust of people and of course all this information are confidential and we share this information only after the conforming of persons of victims and witnesses. But we try to cooperate with the law enforcement bodies in Ukraine and we try to strengthen their capacity because unfortunately Ukrainian law enforcement are not reformed yet. We had no time to do this unfortunately because every time we are doing everything at Hock because we are in the situation of war for the last eight years and the capacity of our security service police and general prosecutor's office are not enough to investigate all those crimes unfortunately but our civil society is trying to strengthen them to help them to investigate. And I have to say that there are a lot of prosecutors who are very, very, you know, like maybe they are not so professional as we want them but they have the initiative is very strong and they are working without weekends and sometimes it is 24 hours a day and they are doing a huge, huge work. For example, Prosecutor Kravchenko from Bucha we saw them from the morning till deep night and he was personally during the exhumation process when the bodies were like dig from the graves and he was present personally during this process and he has done a huge job in Bucha, you know, it is... and psychologically, yeah, mentally it is not easy to investigate all these crimes but they are trying to do their best and I have to say that really I was no expected a lot from them but they surprised me a lot. I mean our law enforcement bodies. Yes, well I think everyone viewing today will feel the same way about you. In a way there have been many heroes and I definitely consider you one of those. I know many people focus on feeding the soul and you have been feeding our mind as well as our minds of what is possible. I know chef Jose Andres was doing the World Central Kitchen and they are providing humanitarian meals in and around Ukraine and he said after his restaurant was hit with missiles he said many ways to fight, we do it with food and I definitely want to thank you because you do it with the pen and with the computer and with the truth and based on all that you have shared with us today also heart. It is journalism not beyond borders but beyond belief that you don't forget the people you interview and you understand that they are not just quotes but they are people that deserve dignity and so we thank you for setting up the media initiative and we look forward to communicating with you more in the future and you inspire me the same way that I heard Bono and the edges acoustic performance of walk on and one thing they said there is that Ukrainians are fighting for freedom too and that they're actually living and actually dying for the ideal that is freedom and we thank you for the work that you're doing with the pen and it's the best way to honor World Press Day is to be able to speak it with you who knows how important it is and we thank you for that and we look forward to the moment when we can celebrate the liberation and the continued nation of Ukraine. Thank you for joining us today. Mahalo. Thank you for your support and have a nice day and I hope you to meet you in Kiev and to talk you personally in Kiev in liberated Kiev in freedom in free Kiev and Kiev is the capital of free people so come here. That sounds good. I was there in 2016 so I'll come back again. Of course, we are waiting for you. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com Mahalo.