On Tuesday, February 8, in Melitopol, the Crimean Tatar Resource Center presented an exclusive documentary Bring Me Back My Dad!, which tells about the tragedies of children whose dads were imprisoned or forcibly kidnapped after the occupation of Crimea.
The event was attended by team members who worked on the creation of the film, MPs, activists, volunteers, public figures, journalists and others.
Communications manager Tetiana Podvorniak said that after the occupation of Crimea, thousands of activists paid the price for their civic position. And now, according to the CTRC, 121 people are in the dungeons of the FSB, away from their families. 197 children are forced to grow up without father's love and care.
“We dreamed for a very long time and set ourselves the task of making a film about children whose parents are in places of captivity, arrested by the occupation regime. And about children whose parents forcibly disappeared or went missing and there is still no information about them. After all, this topic is very important, it needs to be promoted”,- said Liudmyla Korotkykh, manager of the CTRC.
Korotkykh emphasized that this picture reflects the problem of violations of the rights of only two categories of children: children whose fathers are in places of captivity and children whose parents were forcibly abducted and are considered missing. But in fact, there are many more such categories.
“15 children died tragically, 1 infant was separated from his mother, tens of thousands of children were deprived of the right to study their native (Crimean Tatar or Ukrainian) languages in the occupied Crimea, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children from the mainland of Ukraine were deprived of the right to health improvement and medical rehabilitation in children's health centers and children's specialized sanatoriums in Crimea, thousands of children have become internally displaced persons, thus deprived of the right to live in their homeland in their ethnic community”,- she explained.
Speaking about how to help political prisoners and their families, representatives of the CTRC recalled the campaign MP, Help the Prisoners of the Kremlin!, launched by the International Movement for the De-occupation of Crimea and solidarity with the Crimean Tatar people #LIBERATECRIMEA. As part of this initiative, Ukrainian and European MPs can take patronage over the Crimeans who have been arrested or persecuted by the Russian occupiers.
“It is important that at least one MP takes under the patronage of one political prisoner and begins to systematically work in this direction. We hope that there will be local deputies in Melitopol who will take care of the families of political prisoners in order to help these children”,- Korotkykh emphasized.
Leila Ibrahimova, deputy of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Council, emphasized the importance of this film. She believes that Ukraine should talk more about the problems of political prisoners and their children, about human rights violations in Crimea, about the real situation on the peninsula. After all, unfortunately, after 8 years of occupation, people already forgot about this topic.
“Thanks to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, all activists, all partners. Because you have taken on an important mission to talk about the problems that, unfortunately, exist in our society in the 21st century. Thanks to art, thanks to this project, this film, you can tell many people about the truth”,- said Yevheniia Pidlypenko, Head of the Department of Culture and Youth of the Melitopol Local Council.
