Ukraine Breaks Up Protest against Police Brutality

Ukrainian security forces on Friday broke up a demonstration by hundreds of people in central Kiev protesting against police brutality after the alleged rape of a woman in the south of the country by two officers.

Around 200 people turned out on Kiev's Independence Square Thursday evening for the protest, many clutching pictures of relatives who they claimed have been tortured or beaten by the Ukrainian security forces.

However with the protesters showing no sign of shifting in the early hours of Friday and erecting tents to stay the night, Ukraine's elite Berkut anti-riot police moved in to break up the demonstration.

Nine people were arrested as the armored police forced people out of the square and protesters sang the national anthem and cried "Glory to Ukraine, Death to the Enemies!". At least one television journalist was injured.

All the arrested protesters were released later Friday and some of them were told to pay a fine, said opposition party UDAR.

Meanwhile about 20 activists were remaining in the Kiev's central square demanding that Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko be sacked and police forces overhauled.

"We are waiting for Kiev residents to support us, otherwise the anti-riot police will break us up again tonight," 56-year-old Oleksandr Borshulyuk, an activist from Kirovohrad, a city some 250 kilometers southeast of Kiev, told Agence France Presse.

Kiev police officials denied using excessive force against the protesters.

"Police didn't violate anything, there are no wounded, everyone is safe and sound," the chief for the Kiev regional police, Valeriy Koryak, was quoted as saying.

The gang rape in the southern Mykolayiv region of 29-year-old Iryna Krashkova who says two policemen raped her after taking her into the woods in a taxi last month, caused outrage.

Initially, police detained only one officer leaving the other one free, saying he could not have been involved in the rape and claiming he was on duty that night.

The second policeman was detained only after several hundred protesters stormed a police station in the woman's home village, hurling firebombs and stones at the building.

The policeman was widely thought to have enjoyed the protection of local authorities because of family connections.

The outrage over the incident has also sparked protests against other alleged violations. On July 12, opposition activists attempted to storm a police station in Kiev and on July 6 a station in the Kiev region town of Fastov.