On Sunday, December 10, International Human Rights Day is marked all over the world – it was on this day in 1948, during the third session of the UN General Assembly, that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. This document proclaimed fundamental civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights at the international level and thus established their standards. However, not all countries adhere to the principles of the declaration. In particular, after the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, the human rights situation on the peninsula is constantly deteriorating.
After the occupation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, thousands of activists came under repression for their civic position. Criminal cases have been opened, detentions, searches and arrests are systematically carried out, people are forcibly disappeared.
The indigenous Crimean Tatar people find themselves in a particularly difficult situation and are subject to repression. According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, during the entire period of the occupation of Crimea, the number of political prisoners and those prosecuted in criminal cases reached 305, 205 of which were representatives of the Crimean Tatar people.
Russia, violating international law, continues to carry out mass repressions and put pressure on Crimean Tatars and pro-Ukrainian activists on the territory of the Crimean peninsula. According to the CTRC, from 2017 to 2023 the following was recorded on the peninsula:
458 searches (325 in relation to Crimean Tatars)
1504 detentions (1210 in relation to Crimean Tatars)
1460 interrogations (1100 regarding Crimean Tatars)
1,446 arrests (1,054 against Crimean Tatars)
3180 violations of the right to a fair trial (1999 in relation to Crimean Tatars)
584 violations of the right to healthcare access (384 in relation to Crimean Tatars)
374 transferrings (293 in relation to the Crimean Tatars).
In total, during 2017-2023, 9,006 violations of fundamental human rights were recorded in occupied Crimea, 6,365 against representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center wants to remind Ukrainian society about the occupation of Crimea, about human rights violations on the peninsula that are carried out by the occupiers, about the systemic repression of the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar peoples, and that after nine years the situation is only getting worse.
Moreover, this practice also extends to the newly occupied territories of Ukraine – Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, where the occupiers are trying to intimidate people in the same way.
Let us recall that the Crimean Tatar Resource Center not only records human rights violations, but also systematically informs the international community about the crimes of the Russian Federation in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
Over the entire period of their work, experts of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center submitted 108 applications, complaints, reports to international human rights organizations and their structures:
— ECHR (25 applications);
— UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples (7 documents);
— EMRIP (7 documents);
— UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (8 documents);
— UN special procedures (22 documents);
— UN Human Rights Committee (2 statements);
— UN Committee on Women’s Rights (4 documents);
— Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2 reports);
— European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (7 complaints);
— HDIM, OSCE (22 reports);
— other OSCE bodies (2 documents).
The infographic was developed by #LIBERATECRIMEA activists, the Crimean Tatar Resource Center and Ukrainian artist Andriy Yermolenko .