About 30,000 Crimean Tatars have fled peninsula since 2014

Since 2014, about 30,000 Crimean Tatars have been forced to leave the temporarily occupied Crimea.

“In May, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea together with NGOs sent to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court another batch of evidence that Russia had committed crimes against humanity in Crimea. The twelfth communication contains evidence of the systematic persecution of Crimean Tatars on political, ethnic and religious grounds on the peninsula,” Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol Igor Ponochovnyi posted on Facebook.

As noted, since 2014, about 30,000 Crimean Tatars have been forced to flee the peninsula due to intolerable living conditions, harassment, etc. Twenty-two activists have been abducted or gone missing. At least 18 Crimean Tatars have been tortured.

According to Ponochovnyi, since 2014, more than 200 people have been prosecuted in the occupied Crimea for political reasons, and at least 136 are held as political prisoners. At the same time, 75% of searches carried out by the occupiers in Crimea accounted for Crimean Tatars, who total almost 83% of all detainees.

The Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea noted that at least 50 Crimean Tatar activists on the peninsula had received a "warning" against participating in events on the occasion of the Crimean Tatar Flag Day.

Ponochovnyi stresses that Russia and its occupation administration systematically violate the rights of the indigenous people of Crimea – the Crimean Tatars – trying to suppress the resistance of Ukrainian citizens who disagree with the occupation and remind disloyal groups about the consequences of opposing Russia's occupation policy.

As a reminder, the Crimean Tatar Flag Day is marked on June 26.

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