On Thursday, November 5, Ukrainian Ambassador Ievhen Tsymbaliuk, speaking at a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, spoke about violations in the occupied Crimea, in particular, about blocking the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and about new sentences to the Crimean Tatars.
“Ukraine, like other participating states, remains seriously concerned about the situation in Crimea, temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. We continue to raise this issue in international forums within the framework of their respective mandates”,- Tsymbaliuk said.
The ambassador spoke about the oppression of various ethnic groups, repressive policies against freedom of the media and the safety of journalists, suppression of education in the native languages of ethnic groups living on the peninsula. The diplomat also stressed that the Russian Federation is actually blocking the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on the peninsula.
“These are not empty words. According to Metropolitan Klyment of the Crimean Diocese of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, in Crimea the number of religious communities of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has decreased from 49 in 2014 to only six. Three of them are under threat of dissolution”,- he explained.
Tsymbaliuk also mentioned the new sentences to the defendants in the so-called Krasnohvardiiske Hizb ut-Tahrir case, who were illegally sentenced to terms from 12 to 17 years in a maximum security prison.
We once again call on the Russian Federation to abandon the illegal occupation of Crimea, the militarization of the Black and Azov Seas and end aggression against Ukraine, including by withdrawing its armed formations, mercenaries and their equipment from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine”,- he added.