The Crimean Tatar Resource Center sent a report to the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the context of the fight against terrorism about the persecution of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, as well as the pro-Ukrainian population in the occupied Crimea under the guise of combating terrorism.
“Since 2014, when the Russian Federation began de facto control of the Crimean peninsula, the occupation authorities began to actively fight extremism and terrorism on the peninsula. For this, the Russian Federation began in violation of Art. 64 IV of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of August 12, 1949, to use their own legislation in the occupied territory”,- the document says.
The experts noted that the main purpose of these actions is to create an image of terrorists and extremists in relation to the indigenous Crimean Tatar people and pro-Ukrainian activists who did not accept the occupation and opposed it.
In their report, the experts of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center spoke about the most common tools to combat Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian activists who oppose the actions of the de facto authorities in Crimea. In particular, about the Hizb ut-Tahrir cases, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Noman Çelebicihan Crimean Tatar Volunteer Battalion, as well as the fact that under the guise of combating extremism in 2016 the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, the representative and executive body of the indigenous people of Ukraine, as an extremist organization and banned its activities.
“While Russia creates the appearance of fighting terrorism and extremism, using illegal measures and purposefully persecuting the Crimean Tatars and pro-Ukrainian activists, it itself actively uses terrorist methods in the war against Ukraine”,- the experts of the CTRC stressed.
