On Wednesday, February 9, the Crimean Tatar Resource Center presented an exclusive documentary Bring Me Back My Dad!, which raises one of the most urgent and painful topics of our time: childhood without a father.
The event was attended by team members who worked on the creation of the film, MPs, activists, volunteers, public figures, journalists and others.
“After the occupation of Crimea in 2014, thousands of activists fell under the repression of the Russian Federation. Unfortunately, not only adults, but also children suffer harassment. That is why the Crimean Tatar Resource Center decided to make a documentary film Bring Me Back My Dad! about children whose parents are in places of captivity, arrested by the occupation regime and children whose parents were subjected to enforced disappearance”,- said Tetiana Podvorniak, communications manager of the CTRC.
CTRC manager Liudmyla Korotkykh noted that this picture reflects the problem of violations of the rights of only two categories of children: children whose parents 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 tragically died;
– 1 infant was separated from mother;
– dozens of children suffered because of the murder and enforced disappearance of their parents;
– tens of thousands of children are deprived of the right to study their native (Crimean Tatar or Ukrainian) languages in the occupied Crimea;
– tens of thousands of children suffered from ecocide in the occupied Crimea;
– hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children from the mainland of Ukraine are 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;
– tens of thousands of children have become victims of the militarization of the educational process, in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article IV of the Geneva Convention 51, which prohibits propaganda of service in the army of the occupying state among the civilian population. Russia forms in the minds of Crimean children a cult of war, service in the Russian army, a cult of violence and hatred;
– thousands of children have become victims of inciting ethnic hatred and racial intolerance;
– thousands of children from orphanages were deprived of the right to obtain Ukrainian citizenship and move to the mainland of Ukraine;
– tens of thousands of children were limited in their right to education in Ukrainian universities.
Speaking about how to help political prisoners and their families, Liudmyla Korotkykh 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.
Deputy of the Zaporizhzhia City Council Viacheslav Zaitsev thanked the Crimean Tatar Resource Center for the work done, and also assured that in the near future the deputies of Zaporizhzhia city would also join the campaign MP, Help the Prisoners of the Kremlin!
