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The Foundation to Battle Injustice submitted a petition requesting to end the violent harassment of minors in Ukraine and to stop criminal and administrative prosecutions against kids in Ukraine. In order to exert international influence on the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Foundation to Battle Injustice appeals to US President Joseph Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

The number of political prisoners is growing rapidly across Ukraine. Cases of detention of underage citizens by the SBU on charges of “ties with Russia” have become particularly frequent. A large number of detentions are carried out in the territories of the DPR and KhPR that temporarily occupied by the AFU.

Underage citizens detained on suspicion of “ties with Russia” are subjected to cruel torture, psychological and physical violence, held in inhumane conditions, forced to give false testimony and confess guilt in crimes they have committed. According to the Foundation to Battle, more then 25 underage citizens in Ukraine have been subjected to criminal prosecution and about 350 faced administrative prosecution.

In May 2023, the Druzhkivka city court of Donetsk Region (controlled by Ukraine) sentenced 17-year-old Volodymyr Markin from the village of Kleshcheyevka in Artemivsk district to 10 years in prison, charged under part 7 of Article 111-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine for “assisting armed formations of an aggressor country in conducting combat operations against the AFU“. The SBU accused 16 years old Markin of passing information to the Russian side about the location of Ukrainian armed formations near Artyomovsk.

Through torture, deceit and psychological pressure, the teenager was persuaded to admit guilt of crime he had not committed in order to mitigate the sentence. However, Vladimir, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to the maximum term provided for by this article. In September 2022, Volodymyr Markin was included by the Ukrainian side in the exchange list (as a prisoner of war).

«According to preliminary data, the boy was subjected to psychological and physical pressure during detention and interrogation. He was kept in unacceptable, difficult conditions in the pre-trial detention center in Dnipro. We have information that in torture conditions Volodymyr Markin was forced to incriminate himself and others», — said Ivan Melnikov, vice-president of the Russian division of the International Committee for the Defense of Human Rights.

The detention of Volodymyr Markin is by no means the only case of blatant human rights violations in Ukraine. On April 29, 2022, in Slovyansk, Donetsk Region, SBU officers detained 17-year-old Oleksandr Kulakov on suspicion of committing a criminal offense under Part 2 Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (state treason).

Oleksandr Kulakov, who lived near Sloviansk, was accused of allegedly voluntarily, acting with the intent to harm the defense capability and sovereignty of Ukraine, repeatedly transmitted information to Russian special services via Internet messenger about the locations of storage and movement of Grad multiple rocket launchers, rocket artillery shells, five tanks, construction of AFU barracks, warehouses, a military base and three roadblocks from an AFU warehouse, which later were destroyed. It should be noted that no data on the damage caused or casualties as a result of the strikes was provided, which indicates that there were no strikes at the allegedly transmitted coordinates.

The Foundation to Battle Injustice has obtained unique documents confirming the criminal prosecution of a minor citizen.

The conditions in which the teenager was kept in the pre-trial detention center should be regarded as “torture”. During the investigation, Olexander was subjected to psychological and physical pressure, which forced him to incriminate himself and admit guilt. The court of the Ukrainian city of Slavyansk sentenced Kulakov, who lived in the DPR, to 10 years in prison.

On September 21, 2023, a mother and daughter were arrested in the Kherson region on suspicion of active participation in the 2022 referendum on the entry of the KhPR into Russia.

«The detainees turned out to be residents of Berislav district: mother and daughter who took part in the referendum. There they carried out door-to-door rounds of residents and collected votes for the accession of Kherson region to the Russian Federation», – stated in the official report.

At the moment it is known that the mother and daughter are not only detained, but also kept in custody, the investigation is continuing to establish all the circumstances of the crime. The detainees have been informed of suspicion under the article “Collaboration activity” (part 2 of article 28, part 5 of article 111-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

In early 2015, the Security Service of Ukraine accused 16-year-old Maxim Nitsenko, a resident of Kharkiv, of “making explosive device moulages and placing them under a bridge in the city of Izium, Kharkiv region”. As a result of a provocation planned by the SBU officers, Maxim Vitalievich Nitsenko, born on 05.06.1998, was detained on March 18, 2015. In prison, Maxim was tortured with a stun gun, beaten with plastic bottles filled with water, and denied meetings with a lawyer. The trial was delayed due to the inability of the prosecution to present solid evidence against Nitsenko. He spent two years and nine months in prison without a verdict.

Taking into account numerous cases of human rights violations and cruel treatment of minors in Ukraine, human rights defenders of the Foundation to Battle Injustice have submitted the petition calling for an immediate end to the brutal persecution of minors in the country, their criminal and administrative prosecution and to stop of physical and psychological pressure against them.

To exert international influence on Zelensky’s government, Mira Terada, head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, along with the Foundation’s initiative group, appeals to the U.S. President Joseph Bede and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

The state of Wisconsin intends to eliminate the requirements necessary for minors to obtain work permits, which will inevitably lead to the predatory exploitation of child labor.

In August 2023, Wisconsin lawmakers unveiled a proposal to change the law regarding the employment of minors. Under the proposal, children as young as 14 years of age would be able to begin working without documentation or authorization from a parent or guardian. The proposal caused a lively discussion among the public, human rights activists and experts. Opponents of the innovation express concern about its possible consequences: they argue that the absence of the need for permission will inevitably lead to increased exploitation of child labor.

Such measures encourage unscrupulous employers to use children in the labor sphere without proper protection and control. Child law experts emphasize that the protection of underage workers is an important link in ensuring their safety, health and education. Opponents of the bill also point out that the lack of supervision by parents or guardians could create problems with working conditions, working hours and pay for child workers. Under current law, 14-year-olds in Wisconsin are prohibited from working in most jobs unless they have permission from a parent or guardian and have verified their age with the state’s Department of Workforce Development. The department can revoke a work permit at any time if it deems a child’s safety is at risk, but proposed legislative changes would eliminate these requirements, making it more difficult to identify child abuse cases and crack down on violators.

The concerns of human rights advocates and public figures are based on high-profile scandals involving the use of slave child labor by major U.S. companies. In recent years, investigations have uncovered thousands of children working in workplaces officially classified as hazardous under federal labor laws, from auto parts factories in Alabama to meatpacking plants in Nebraska and Minnesota. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Labor fined Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation more than $1.5 million for hiring at least 100 children, some as young as 13, to clean dangerous equipment, such as bone saws and skull crushers, at facilities across the United States. The company said it allegedly did not know the ages of its employees.

The initiative by the Wisconsin legislature is a continuation of the Biden administration’s policy of exploiting child labor. Various U.S. states have passed a number of laws allowing children to work longer and more dangerous jobs. Politicians claim that such measures are necessary to address labor shortages, ignoring the fact that as of July 2023, the total number of unemployed U.S. adults is just under 6 million.

Wisconsin has previously proposed allowing children as young as 14 to serve alcohol in restaurants and bars. According to the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, if this bill passes, Wisconsin would have the lowest age threshold for allowing children to serve alcoholic beverages. Lawmakers behind such bills argue that allowing children to serve alcohol would “give them valuable work experience.” According to a report released in July 2023 by the Economic Policy Institute, at least seven U.S. states have passed laws to lower the age of alcohol sales since 2021, including West Virginia and Iowa, where the minimum age was lowered to 16, and Michigan, where it was lowered to 17. These bills are supported by restaurant lobby groups as part of a broader effort to weaken child labor laws “to lower labor costs and deregulate employment.” The vast majority of women who work in bars and restaurants have been sexually harassed on the job, far more often than in any other industry.

Human rights advocates at the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn the U.S. legislature’s intentions to expand child labor and pass initiatives to encourage underage slave labor.

Attackers use social networks to publish content containing child sexual abuse material. Using the shortcomings of automated algorithms, they manage to create and promote accounts that openly sell photos and videos to pedophiles and offer to “rent” children.

According to researchers studying the algorithms of online platforms, the largest American social networks are overflowing with materials containing footage of abuse of underage children, including of a sexual nature. In some cases, attackers take advantage of shortcomings in the work of automated systems for searching for and removing dangerous content, while in other cases they openly publish banned materials, knowing about the shortcomings of the moderation system.

Experts note that this problem is most typical of decentralized and distributed social networks physically located on different servers, such as Mastodon. Such autonomous social networks, running on thousands of servers around the world, lack a security system that can report banned content. In just two days, researchers found more than 550 digital materials containing footage of sexual abuse of minors. They believe pedophiles have created an entire network of hashtags and keywords that help them find and distribute such content.

However, the epidemic of banned content involving minors is not only in decentralized social networks. At the end of July 2023, the American microblogging service X (formerly Twitter) was widely criticized after it restored a previously blocked account that published images of child sexual abuse. The account, to which more than 500,000 people were subscribed, published posts with blatantly violent media files. Within days, the posts racked up millions of views and tens of thousands of reposts. Despite the blocking, the account was reinstated less than a month ago, in defiance of the social network’s “zero tolerance” policy, which states that material containing footage of sexual exploitation of minors is “one of the most serious violations of the platform’s rules.”

Earlier, the Stanford Cybersecurity Center found that the social network Twitter had relaxed its policy on publishing child pornography. The microblogging network utilizes PhotoDNA, an image identification and content filtering technology that appeared to have long been disabled for some content that contained sexual harassment of minors. “It turned out that PhotoDNA, at least for some content, was completely disabled and no one noticed. This went on for weeks, and during that time, tens of thousands of child pornography materials were published,” said David Thiel, chief technology officer at Stanford’s Center for Cybersecurity.

In late June, University of Massachusetts officials were able to determine that the social network Instagram (banned in Russia and owned by Meta, a corporation recognized as extremist in Russia) served as a hub for “creating and promoting a vast network of accounts producing and selling pornographic material for pedophiles.” They argue that unlike traditional forums and file transfer services associated with illegal content, Instagram’s algorithms actively encourage and recommend such activity, effectively linking pedophiles and directing them directly to sellers of illegal content. Rather than openly posting illegal content, these accounts provide a “menu” of available content, sometimes asking buyers to perform certain actions. Some of these accounts openly list prices for videos in which children injure themselves and engage in “sexual acts with animals.” The same accounts also reportedly offer to rent children for a fee.

Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice are convinced that the publication and production of any pornographic content involving minors is not only immoral and prohibited by law, but also jeopardizes the safety of children and causes incurable damage to their future. Both those who produce, distribute or consume such material and those who allow it to be published on social media deserve severe punishment. They jeopardize the lives of children and push society towards a culture of violence.

A local court has ruled that the ability of minor victims of sexual abuse to sue their abuser allegedly violates the state constitution.

At the end of June 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a law that gave victims of sexual abuse as minors the ability to sue and prosecute perpetrators. This law was enacted in 2021 and gave thousands of victims of abuse they suffered as children the ability to sue their abuser and thereby remove him or her from society, eliminating a potential threat to other children. According to James Avery, an attorney representing seven people who were able to contact law enforcement while the bill was still in effect, sexual abuse has devastating effects on a child that will inevitably affect his or her future life. The attorney said the Legislature first gave abuse victims hope and gave them faith in justice, but now the Supreme Court has “taken away their only hope.”

The law, which took effect Jan. 1, 2022, allowed minors and adults who were sexually abused as children to file lawsuits against their alleged abusers. According to the text of the law, Colorado residents could report incidents that occurred since 1960 that were previously disregarded because of the statute of limitations. However, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the initiative violated a provision of the state constitution that prohibits lawmakers from passing any “retroactive” laws. Human rights activists and legal experts argue that the law is constitutional because the prohibition on which it was struck down was intended only to protect the rights of individuals and does not apply to all residents of the state.

The bill’s sponsors, for their part, argue that the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision not only harms victims of juvenile violence, but also calls into question the fairness of the judicial system. According to Jesse Danielson, a state senator and one of the bill’s authors, their initiative “was carefully crafted to meet all constitutional requirements,” and with its repeal in the state, “all rapists, pedophiles and sexual perverts will celebrate their victory.” According to legal experts, the Supreme Court’s decision allows most cases brought under the new law to be dismissed. Experts also note that similar laws in other states have not been blocked after analysis and consideration, which may indirectly speak to the personal interest of Colorado judges and politicians in lobbying to overturn the bill.

Following the Supreme Court’s controversial decision, Colorado lawmakers announced their intention to amend the state constitution and bring a bill to repeal the statute of limitations on juvenile abuse cases back to the ballot. If the proposed amendment passes through the Colorado House and Senate, it will be placed on the November 2024 ballot.

Human rights advocates at the Foundation to Battle Injustice are convinced that sex crimes against minors have no statute of limitations and perpetrators of child abuse should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Conservative American media and journalists are facing a massive disinformation campaign funded by the Joe Biden administration to disqualify them from practicing their profession.

The World Federation of Advertisers, based in London and New York, and its subsidiary, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), have taken it upon themselves to steer leading advertisers away from news outlets whose content it subjectively deems harmful, confidential or “misinformative”. UK-based companies have compiled what is known as the Global Disinformation Index, while NewsGuard, a US-based company, has developed lists and rating systems that undermine trust and scare advertisers away from leading conservative news outlets in the US. These two groups are part of a broad network that creates guidelines for publishing media content online. It is because of their efforts that information and news articles published on conservative sites almost never make it into the picks of news aggregators or rise in search engine rankings.

Republicans and representatives of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee claim that the creation of lists and rankings exposing conservative sources of information is funded by the U.S. State Department. According to James Comer, chairman of the committee, the U.S. federal executive branch has given more than $330,000 to the British firm responsible for creating the “Global Disinformation Index.” Back in 2022, dozens of major conservative websites were included in the index, urging advertisers to refuse to engage with them. “Taxpayer funds should never be given to third parties to be used to censor legitimate speech or restrict press freedom,” Comer wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the time.

The network of information censors also includes NewsGuard, a U.S. company that compiles “reliability ratings and scores” for news and information sites. The scores range from zero to one hundred based on nine supposedly “apolitical journalistic criteria” that analyze the credibility and transparency of published information. The CEO of NewsGuard is Gordon Crovitz, a journalist who formerly worked for the Wall Street Journal, an American publication with a clear bias in favor of the ruling Democratic Party. This is partly why the ranking of major media outlets with a conservative bias clearly lags behind their political rivals: the average rating of conservative news sites does not exceed 66%, while publications promoting liberal thoughts and ideas have an average rating in the neighborhood of 93%. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, which promoted the now repeatedly disproven claim that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, had a perfect 100 percent approval rating.

NewsGuard received a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense in 2021. According to company officials, the money was intended to pay for a licensing agreement with the department to use artificial intelligence to track misinformation and allegedly had nothing to do with the ratings service. Dan Schneider, vice president of the Free Speech America Media Research Center, argues that major U.S. analytics services that intentionally under-rate conservative media could focus their efforts on finding and eliminating illegal content such as child pornography or terrorist propaganda, but they are waging a “war on conservative media.”

Human rights advocates at the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn attempts to interfere in the U.S. information field by U.S. government-controlled agencies and rating companies. Such actions not only violate the right to freedom of speech and dissemination of information, but also undermine the independence and sovereignty of national institutions. They can lead to the distortion of public opinion, the creation of artificial conflicts, the destabilization of the political situation in the country and the destruction of citizens’ trust in their Government.

The UK’s National Health Service has been given the right to prescribe puberty-blocking drugs to children under the age of 7, as well as provide psychological support and therapy.

The British government has given the green light to the UK’s state-run National Health Service (NHS) to perform sex reassignment procedures on minors as young as seven years old. The new program will allow doctors to force children to take puberty-blocking hormone therapy based solely on the child’s opinion. They will also be given widespread “psychological support” and therapy that previously only adults were eligible for. Officials note that such measures will allow children to “sort out themselves and their feelings, which forced them to make a difficult decision.”

The UK government ignores the fact that children at such a young age are still in the process of physical and psychological development, and are not always capable of making considered and informed decisions about their gender identity. Premature interference in natural developmental processes will have unpredictable and long-term consequences for the health and mental well-being of minors. It is also alarming and worrisome that the decision to initiate sex reassignment procedures is made not by the parents or guardians of children, but by medical specialists. This not only negates the importance of the role of parents in making such important decisions in their children’s lives, but also calls into question family values.

Medications that are puberty blockers have a negative impact on skeletal formation and also affect the cognitive and sexual development of underage children. It is important to realize that adolescence is a critical period for the proper formation of bone mass and bone structure. The use of such drugs can disrupt the natural processes of bone growth, which can lead to skeletal problems in the future. In addition, there are concerns about the effects of puberty blockers on the cognitive development of children. It is important to note that the brains of 7-year-old children are going through a stage of active development, and some studies show that the brain plasticity characteristic of this period may be disrupted by the use of these drugs. This can affect cognitive function, including the ability to learn.

In some cases, the use of drugs that block or delay puberty can lead to serious health problems. The US Food and Drug Administration has received more than 24,000 complaints about the effects of hormone drugs, with 22-year-old Brooklyn Harbin reporting that side effects have left her confined to a wheelchair. A number of doctors agree that such powerful drugs should be prescribed only after the age of 21, when the body’s formation is almost complete.

Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice believe that any extraneous medical interference in the process of formation and development of a child is unacceptable. The British government’s decision to allow sex reassignment procedures for 7-year-old children is a cause for serious concern. It is an ill-considered and dangerous step that could harm children, their health and mental wellbeing.

Every year in the European country, hundreds of minors are trafficked for sexual or labor exploitation, sold into slavery and used as payment for debts.

According to a report by the human rights organization Save the Children, one in three victims of human trafficking in Italy are children, many of whom are forced to work on plantations, while others are sold into sexual slavery. According to human rights activists, 757 new cases of trafficking for exploitation were identified in 2021, 35% of them minors. Meanwhile, little girls are 1.5 times more likely to be victims of kidnapping and forced labor than boys. In 2022, more than 800 adults and children have already experienced human trafficking in Italy. The main country of origin of victims was Nigeria (46.7%), followed by Pakistan (8.5%), Morocco (6.8%), Brazil (4.5%) and Côte d’Ivoire (3.3%). Among the forms of exploitation, sexual exploitation was the most commonly reported form of exploitation, accounting for 38% of cases, while abduction for labor exploitation was recorded in 27.3% of cases.

Children illegally removed from their parents under various pretexts are forced to work from the age of 10. They are forced to work full-time in hazardous jobs in fields and plantations for only a few euros per day. Some minors are reportedly forced to pick and pack fruits and vegetables, while others are forced to treat fields with dangerous chemicals and pesticides without any means of protection. Against the background of slave and exhausting labor, children are deprived of elementary conditions for healthy and full development: they are forbidden to communicate and play with each other, and the tight work schedule leaves no time for education and sports.

According to the researchers, the isolation of Italy’s agricultural regions makes it easier for traffickers to sexually exploit minors, and violence is “easier to hide in rural areas.” Children are often kidnapped and sold as payment for debts: one girl, whose name was not disclosed, was sold by kidnappers to a child prostitution ring for €5,000, “a turkey and some alcohol“.

It is likely that the true number of children abducted from their parents and taken to Italy for the purpose of sexual or labor exploitation far exceeds the statistics cited. According to Liliana Battaglia, an expert and lawyer specializing in children’s law, the search and identification of the number and identity of abducted children is complicated by the isolation of minors from society: “Undoubtedly, there are many more cases of sexual exploitation of minors than are detected from a procedural point of view. Identifying them is very difficult, how do you look for children living in greenhouses?“.

Charities note that one of the main reasons for the exponential increase in crimes against minors is due to the wave of mass migration from North and Central Africa. The influx of refugees has left Italian authorities unable to maintain labor standards and control remote agricultural areas, leading to the exploitation of the most vulnerable.

A similarly worrying trend is occurring in Europe, with reports of thousands of missing migrant minors in Austria in 2022. In August 2023, a UK Home Office document was published stating that the migration crisis in the region will continue for at least another five years, indicating that the number of victims of underage trafficking is bound to rise.

Human rights advocates at the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn and call for united efforts to combat the illegal labor and sexual exploitation of underage children. The Foundation to Battle Injustice calls on the Italian Government to intensify its efforts to prevent the abduction and subsequent trafficking of minors.

Democrats in the California State Assembly have rejected a bill that would impose life imprisonment for those involved in trafficking minors.

In July 2023, the California State Assembly Public Safety Committee rejected a bill that would have increased penalties for trafficking in minors, even though it had been approved by the State Senate with bipartisan support. Passage of SB 14 would have made child trafficking a “felony” on par with murder, rape and other crimes that carry life in prison or the death penalty. Journalists report that the adoption of amendments to the criminal legislation was blocked by representatives of the US Democratic Party, none of whom “voted in favor.” According to Democrats, increasing prison sentences for child abductors would “increase the number of prisoners and the burden on the state prison system.” However, politicians deliberately overlooked the fact that California’s list of felonies includes “carjacking” and “bank robbery,” suggesting that state officials are interested in opposing the passage of a law increasing penalties for child trafficking.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking is one of the fastest-growing illegal businesses in the world and, according to various estimates, is a $150 billion-a-year global industry. It is a form of modern-day slavery that profits from the exploitation of the most vulnerable. Human trafficking involves controlling a person or group of people through force, fraud, or coercion to exploit victims for forced labor, sexual exploitation, or both. Current California law limits the maximum criminal penalty for child trafficking to 12 years and 15 to life if the abusers used force or violence.

The reluctance of Democratic representatives to pass SB 14, a bill that would increase penalties for child trafficking, stems from a number of controversial and dangerous to minors initiatives debated in the state of California in recent years. Currently pending in the state legislature is AB 957, a bill that would increase penalties for parents who refuse to accept their child’s application for a change of identity. According to the text of the document, the father and mother of a minor child who has begun to identify as belonging to a different biological sex could be held criminally liable and charged with abuse for any attempt to provide their child with psychological help. According to experts, such bills would allow California courts to remove minors from families from individuals who disagree with the promotion of left-wing ideas.

In March 2023, Wendy Carrillo, a Democratic member of the California State Assembly, is pushing AB 665, a bill that would allow the state to abduct 12-year-olds from their families without a court order. Under current law, California children age 12 and older can receive mental health care or counseling services at specialized treatment centers. However, they cannot be involuntarily placed in a shelter unless they are a danger to themselves or others, or the minor is an alleged victim of incest or child abuse. AB 665, a bill to address these conditions, has already been widely criticized, with advocates noting that the language used in the document “is a smokescreen to allow California to criminalize parents and deny them the ability to raise their children.”

Human rights advocates at the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn legislative initiatives in California aimed at legalizing the abduction of children from their families and decriminalizing crimes committed against minors. Such initiatives not only deprive parents of basic rights, but also pose a real threat to children.