The participants of the action, among them families of prisoners of war, missing and killed, as well as public figures of Vinnitsa, aimed to:
- support the families of prisoners of war,
- draw the attention of the authorities and international organizations to the issue of the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war,
- call for increased efforts to bring home all Ukrainian heroes.
Yulia Piskunova, an activist of the International civil society movement #LIBERATECRIMEA, member of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre, told the audience about the situation in the occupied Crimea, about the political prisoners of Crimea, and in particular about those persecuted in the case of the Noman Chelebidzhikhan Battalion.
She noted that on 1 June 2022, the Supreme Court of Russia satisfied the claim of the Prosecutor General’s Office to recognize the Crimean Tatar Volunteer Battalion named after Noman Chelebidzhikhan as a terrorist organization and ban its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation.
‘This is another tool of persecution of representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people. Since 2014, the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre has recorded at least 46 detentions on charges of participation in the Noman Chelebidzhikhan battalion: 18 of them – in the occupied Crimea, 28 – in the occupied Kherson region after February 24, 2022’, – said Yulia.
Organizer: Public organiz/ation of bereaved families ‘United Family of Vinnytsia region’.