Crimean Tatars bearing brunt of Russia's relentless crackdown, says Ukrainian commissioner
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Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets spoke about Russia’s repression of the indigenous people of Crimea at a meeting held in Ankara, Turkey on Dec. 9, news agency Ukrinform has reported.
"On the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea, the representatives of the indigenous people - the Crimean Tatars - are the most persecuted and repressed," Lubinets said at the meeting, titled ‘Human Rights and Crimean Tatars in the Occupied Part of Ukraine.”
“At present, there are 190 political prisoners held in Crimea or already transferred to the Russian Federation. One hundred and twenty-three of them are Crimean Tatars.”
Most political prisoners are held in violation of "all norms" of international humanitarian law, Lubinets said.
Under the pretext of evacuation, the Russians have also been abducting or forcibly transferring Ukrainian children since 2014. Currently, there are about 20,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children, but the number may be "many times higher," Lubinets said.
First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska reported on Dec. 8 that only 387 of the nearly 20,000 children abducted by Russia have been returned. Russia does not directly negotiate on this issue, so the children have to be returned home through third countries, "with the mediation of many caring people," Zelenska said.
Zelenska said she is pinning her hopes on "a coalition to rescue abducted children, which Canada proposed to create a month ago and which should start working soon."
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe reported on Nov. 27 that it had set up a special committee on the violation of the rights of Ukrainian children by Russians.
The first meeting of the committee will be held on Dec. 15 in Paris. It will deal with issues of violations of children's rights by the Russian Federation, as well as the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued on March 17 an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of committing war crimes in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted on April 27 a resolution recognizing the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia as genocide.
According to the Ukrainian state platform Children of War, as of Sept. 27, at least 19,546 children have been deported or forcibly transferred by Russia.
In total, according to the European Parliament, the number of Ukrainian children illegally abducted to Russia may reach 300,000. MEPs believe that Russians started taking Ukrainian children back in 2014, after the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
The Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova admitted on Nov. 9 that 380 Ukrainian children are "under care and custody" across 15 regions of Russia.
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