The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has announced that another session will be held on 25 June to consider several interstate cases, including those concerning Crimea.<\/p>\n
Why this is important – tells the lawyer of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre Liudmila Korotkikh.<\/p>\n
The expert noted that the meeting will focus on two cases: one of them – the joint applications filed in 2014-2015, and the other – filed in 2018. Previous hearings on these cases have already taken place, and the ECHR has already ruled on the partial admissibility of Ukraine’s claims, recognizing most of them as admissible. This is part of the usual practice when a court does not satisfy a claim in full, but most of the articles Ukraine complained about were found admissible. The second hearing in the case has already taken place and the case was considered on the merits.<\/p>\n
“The particular importance of this case on Crimea lies in the fact that even at the stage of consideration of the application for admissibility it was established that the Russian Federation has exercised effective control over the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol since 27 February 2014, applying its own legislation on the territory of the peninsula. Thus, the court recognised that the Russian Federation was responsible for all events that took place after this date.” – Kortkikh noted.<\/p>\n
Kortkiykh said that the cases concern the general practice of persecution and human rights violations, including politically motivated persecution on the peninsula, as well as the illegal transfer of convicted Ukrainian citizens to the territory of Russia. It is worth noting that in May, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a ruling recognising the illegal transfer of Ukrainian citizens from Crimea to Russian territory as a violation of the pact. The ECHR is likely to take a similar position.<\/p>\n
In the two cases, the expert added, Ukraine complains of violations of a number of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the right to life, fair trial, prohibition of inhuman treatment and torture, right to liberty and security, respect for private and family life, freedom of expression and collective rights such as the right to education.<\/p>\n
The interstate case is also important because the ECHR does not consider individual complaints relating to Crimea before ruling on the interstate case.<\/p>\n
“So all those applications that were filed by victims and with the help of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre and other human rights organisations, they are all on pause at the European Court. In 2019, a request was made for almost all Crimean cases and the CTRC provided relevant information on our cases, which we are conducting, and we can expect that after the decision in June, the court will begin to consider individual complaints and make judgements on these cases,” – said Korotkikh.<\/p>\n
Kortkikh added that more than 10 individual cases on banning the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people have been filed with the ECHR. The June session is important because in January the UN International Court of Justice issued a disappointing judgement in a case on violation of the convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, failing to recognize the ban of the representative body of the indigenous people on the peninsula as discrimination. However, hope remains that the ECHR will rule differently, taking into account the individual complaints of specific people who have been harassed, pressurised or had their rights violated by the banning of Mejlis in Crimea.<\/p>\n
We continue to monitor the development of this case and expect a judgement in the near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has announced that another session will be held on 25 June to consider several interstate cases, including those concerning Crimea. Why this is important – tells the lawyer of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre Liudmila Korotkikh. The expert noted that the meeting will focus on two cases: one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n