public hearings in September 2014. The mandate of the Commission will expire on 3 July 2015. As of 8 August, 541 applications had been submitted to the commission for review, of which 82 were accepted and 459 rejected. In most cases, the rejections were because they failed to meet the time frame criteria or to the fact that the cases did not fall within the Commission’s mandate. The applications mostly requested a review of decisions made during the Maidan events or related to alleged violations of the right to peaceful assembly, as well as illegal arrests and detentions. The conclusions of the Commission on each case will be of an advisory character, and will be shared with the High Council of Justice of Ukraine, which will decide on what measures to apply against the judges. Lustration The lustration154 or vetting of corrupt officials and those associated with the previous administration was one of the central demands of the Maidan activists and remains an important focus of civil society. Local communities have been playing a key role in this process by demanding better governance by local and regional officials, including accountability. In most regions throughout Ukraine, especially the western ones, local lustration committees have been created which lead public discussions about whether people in local positions of power should be subject to lustration for their past actions and in identifying and recommending specific candidates to replace them. For example, a Lustration Committee of the Khmelnytskyi region was set up in April consisting of 8 members from civil society and political parties. In March, the People’s Council155 of Ivano-Frankivsk established a Lustration Commission of 9 members (local journalists, entrepreneurs and civil activists) which later integrated five local civil society organizations. Volyn was the first western region to establish a Public Lustration Committee (in late February), which includes 10 members (journalists, academics, workers, and pensioners); it has a public office in the building of the Volyn Regional Council where anyone can initiate a lustration procedure against any public official or candidate for an official post. In Rivne, there are two separate lustration committees and an on-line platform,156whereby anyone can express an opinion about public officials or candidates. The Lviv region Lustration Committee, also created in late February 2014, consists mainly of civil activists and journalists and has its own weekly TV programme, “Lustration”, broadcast on the local TV channel ZIK. Candidates for Lviv state jobs are invited by the Committee to participate in the programme, during which the Committee questions them and decides whether the candidate “passed” lustration. The civic initiatives have had some success in having regional and local officials dismissed and others appointed. However, many of the people responsible for human rights violations remain in positions of power. Activists demand that anyone who ordered violations during Maidan, past leaders of communist organizations, former Security Service of the USSR (KGB) agents, anybody who supports the separatists and public officials who are unable to explain the sources of their property, should be deprived of public office and roles in the government.157 On 14 August, Parliament held a first reading of a draft law on the Lustration of State Authorities. The draft law does not create a single independent lustration body; responsibility for carrying out lustration is given to the heads of each body concerned. It proposes to dismiss virtually all state officials occupying leading posts in previous years, thus entailing wholesale 154 The term “lustration” literally means “cleansing” but is taken to mean “investigation and dismissal” of corrupt officials and those associated with previous regimes. 155 A special local body created during the Maidan protests and authorized to represent the people’s interests. 156 http://rv.lustration.co.ua/about . 157 Stated at a press conference of Kharkiv lustration activists, Kyiv 8 August 2014 218 | P a g e