Reports on violations of indigenous people’s rights submitted to UN

09.02.2022 10:02

Ukrinform

The Crimean Tatar Resource Center has sent a report on Militarization of the Occupied Crimea and Persecution of the Indigenous Crimean Tatar People to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the UN Human Rights Council.

That’s according to a CRC statement posted on Facebook and seen by Ukrinform.

"The CRC provided information on the situation of the militarization of the Russian-occupied Crimea, systematic military exercises, deployment of weapons on the peninsula, illegitimate conscription campaigns, and shaping of a war cult among children," the statement said.

The report notes that since 2014, Crimea has been in a state of protracted interstate armed conflict. "The Russian occupying authorities are deploying military bases, importing heavy military equipment into Crimea amid suspicions that nuclear weapons have also been brought in," the CRC said.

According to the rights watchdog, throughout 2021, the Russian government ran 44 military exercises on the territory of the occupied peninsula involving over 47,550 servicemen and 2,900 military hardware and special equipment units.

The nonprofit states that the occupation and militarization of the Crimean peninsula, as well as the deployment of Russian military bases on its territory, incur damage to local lands and natural resources, limit the access of locals to mountainous and forested areas, and disrupt traditional way of life of the indigenous people of Crimea.

The rights activists demand that Russia cease militarization of Crimea and use of force to persecute the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, as well as reverse the illegal occupation of the peninsula.

According to the CRC, the report was forwarded to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in order to include the information contained therein in the thematic report, which will be presented at the organization’s annual session in July 2022.

The document will also be finalized and presented to the Human Rights Council at its 51st session in September 2022.

The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a subsidiary body of the UN Human Rights Council, established in 2006 by a UN General Assembly resolution as the UN's main intergovernmental human rights body.