MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/. Some 500 citizens of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) gathered for a protest outside the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) office in Donetsk on Monday, a TASS correspondent has reported.
The protesters who come from Donetsk, Illovaisk, Yenakiyevo and Shakhtyorsk call for taking under control the Ukrainian checkpoints saying Kiev forces systematically violate human rights there.
"The citizens have gathered here to draw your attention to what the Ukrainian military are doing at the checkpoints between the DPR and Ukraine. There are huge queues there and even those people who come to the DPR from Ukraine are complaining," one of the protesters said.
People are also concerned about bribe-taking and abuse against peaceful citizens crossing the border.
The protest organizers have called on the OSCE to set up a separate team of monitors who will be present at the checkpoints on a permanent basis and report about the situation there.
The head of the OSCE office in Donetsk, Olga Skripovskaya, has promised that all the demands will be included in the organization’s report.
In late July and in early August 2015, the Donetsk republic’s citizens also staged protests saying they were dissatisfied with the work of the monitors which they said was biased.