After the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, disappearances and kidnappings became a regular practice. According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, during the period of occupation, 21 people are considered missing, about whom there is no information, 15 of them are representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people.
21 people are considered missing: Abduramanov Rizvan, Alyautdinov Marsel, Apselyamov Eskender, Suyunov Arsen, Aripov Shevket, Bondarets Ivan, Vaschuk Valery, Kaplienko Maksim, Kostenko Fedor, Klapova Katerina, Chernysh Vasiliy, Shevketov Marlen, Aliev Arsen, Arislanov Mukhtar, Ganiev Ruslan, Dzhepparov Islyam, Zinedinov Seyran, Ibragimov Ervin, Islyamov Dzhevdet, Terekhov Arlen, Shaimardanov Timu.
The CTRC recalls that it has just been 7 years since unknown persons abducted Crimean Tatar Arsen Aliiev at the bus station in the city of Saky. The Crimean Tatar Resource Center has a video showing a man being pushed into a car and taken away in an unknown direction. Despite the fact that a criminal case was initiated in the occupied Crimea on kidnapping, Aliiev’s whereabouts have remained unknown for the seventh year.
We emphasize that the CTRC has repeatedly informed the international community about these egregious cases of human rights violations and sent dozens of statements, appeals and reports to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Special Report on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center condemns the arrests, detentions and kidnappings used in Crimea as a way to pressure and intimidate the indigenous Crimean Tatar people and pro-Ukrainian activists.
More detailed information about the victims of the occupation of Crimea can be obtained from the clickable diagram Victims of the occupation of Crimea, which is updated on a regular basis on the CTRC website.
We want to remind that on July 28, 2016, the opening of the exposition “The missing and the killed” during the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation organized by the CTRC took place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.