Nine years of darkness: ZMINA co-sponsored an event about Crimea during the Human Rights Council

On 11 July, the Human Rights House Foundation and the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations in Geneva co-hosted a side event at the 53rd session of the Human Rights Council aiming to shed light on the human rights situation in Crimea. The side event was co-sponsored by Human Rights Centre ZMINA.

The event “Nine Years of Darkness – Human Rights in Crimea” was focused on the dramatic deterioration of the human rights situation on the peninsula in the near-decade of Russian occupation. Residents of Crimea have been subjected to enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial punishment, forced conscription into the Russian military, and politically motivated persecution and deprivation of liberty.

Emine Dzheppar, First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, made opening remarks: “The world must remain focused on the human rights crisis in Crimea.” 

Photo: Kateryna Rashevska. Credit: Human Rights House Foundation

“We should remember that all of the crimes we have seen since 24 February 2022 across Ukraine actually started in 2014 in Crimea,” highlighted Kateryna Rashevska from Regional Center for Human Rights. She noted that the Russian Federation continues to hide the status of Crimean children taken from their families since its occupation of the peninsula began in 2014.

Photo: Mariya Sulialina. Credit: Human Rights House Foundation

“For 9 years, children who live in occupied Crimea have been largely invisible to the world. Their Ukrainian identity is being destroyed,” told Mariya Sulialina from Center for Civic Education Almenda. “They are being indoctrinated and some of those children, now adults, are forcibly conscripted into the Russian military.“

Photo: Volodymyr Chekrygin. Credit: Human Rights House Foundation

“People who are detained and abducted in Kherson and other occupied territories of Ukraine are transferred to the temporary detention in Crimea. There are reports of psychological pressure and physical injury while in custody,” added the information about the other human rights violations Volodymyr Chekrygin from Crimean Human Rights Group.

“We continue to call for the release of Iryna Danylovych, Emir Usein Kuku, Vladyslav Yesypenko, and all political prisoners held in Crimea,” said Matthew Jones from Human Rights House Foundation.