UN experts condemn human rights abuses in Russia-occupied Crimea

Experts working with United Nations on Friday deunced reports of human rights violations including abduction, deportation, and enforced disappearances against ethnic mirities in Russian-occupied Crimea, calling on Moscow to do more to protect rights of Tatars and ors re.

Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination, as part of a regular, rotating review of UN member states, took a look at Russia — and areas that it controls — along with five or countries this month. impact of Moscow's war in Ukraine on rights and racial hatred drew particular scrutiny.

In its review of Russia, committee of independent experts focused on just one particular aspect of war — impact on racial discrimination — which has seen a litany of or rights abuses and violations, including murder, summary execution, rape, arbitrary detention and much more, according to UN and or rights monitors.

committee cited reports of “destruction of and dam to Crimean Tatar cultural herit, including tombstones, monuments, and shrines,” and cited a lack of information about efforts to protect such sites from vandalism.

It pointed to reports of barriers to use and study of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar langus and called for reinstatement of Mejlis, a representative body of Crimean Tatars that was disbanded in 2016.

experts cited “refusal” of Russian envoys to provide information and suggested that Crimea, under international law, remains part of Ukraine despite Russia’s annexation of peninsula in 2014.

panel cited reports of “numerous and serious human rights violations against members of ethnic mirity groups and indigeus peoples in Crimea, in particular abductions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and forcible transfer or deportation of inhabitants from se territories to Russian Federation.”

committee aims to help countries uphold ir commitments under International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which Moscow — n capital of Soviet Union — ratified more than five deces ago.

After skipping a UN-backed Human Rights Committee review last year, Russia deployed a delegation of nearly 20 people to attend and field questions in review, a first by Russian envoys to a UN rights review in Geneva since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.