March 23, 2025, 12:02 p.m.
(Photo: Ukrinform)
Recently, human rights activists, together with international organizations, presented evidence of Russia's systematic war crimes in Crimea and other occupied territories to the UN.
The Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIPHR) presented its research during the event "Torture and arbitrary detention as crimes against humanity". Human rights activists of the MHI identified at least 1,908 civilians illegally detained by Russia.
"Analyzing these crimes, we see that Russia is persecuting a wide group of Ukrainians who refuse to recognize the occupation. They become the first targets regardless of whether they act proactively. The persecution of civilians can and should be considered a crime against humanity ," said Liubov Smachylo, Head of the Analytical Department of the MIPL.
She urged delegates from the UK, Poland, Lithuania, Greece, Finland, the USA, Germany, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Iceland, Mexico, Slovakia, Georgia and Estonia to join the implementation of the action plan for the release of civilians developed by the initiative. Human rights activists propose to divide civilians into groups based on certain criteria, such as age, gender, and occupation, assign them to individual states and encourage these countries to release the relevant categories of people.
According to Iryna Baran El Ghali, international advocacy manager of the Crimean Human Rights Group, detentions in Crimea have been going on since 2014, and Russia uses illegal detentions as a form of torture.
"For the entire period of occupation of Crimea, which is more than 11 years, not a single criminal has been punished. Our organization is aware of cases when the same criminals who committed arbitrariness in Crimea are now torturing Ukrainians in the newly occupied territories," she emphasized.
During 2024, at least 56 illegal or dubious criminal proceedings were opened against civil society activists, journalists, religious leaders and all dissidents in Crimea. At the same time, at least 61 activists, 29 of whom were representatives of the Crimean Tatar people, have been killed during the occupation of Crimea.
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