Balaklava Bay in Crimea. Report on 10 years of occupation of Crimea: multiple human rights violations and suppression of freedom of speech Human rights
The illegal annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014 led to the imposition of Russian citizenship, laws and orders in all spheres of life on the peninsula. Occupation authorities suppressed opposition, committing serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. This is stated in the report, “Ten Years of Occupation by the Russian Federation: Human Rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol, Ukraine,” published on Wednesday.
The report, prepared by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is timed to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of the events that led to the de facto secession of the peninsula from Ukraine.
The Russian occupation authorities in Crimea, the report says, consistently suppressed freedom of expression and severely limited the religious freedom of minorities. The space for civil society activity has shrunk significantly.
“Many media outlets have been closed, disproportionately impacting the Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian communities, their rights to freedom of expression and access to information, and the preservation of their own culture and identity,” note the report’s authors.
The failure of the Russian Federation to fulfill its obligations under international humanitarian law as the occupying power in Crimea, the document says, creates numerous problems for Ukraine in light of the future reintegration of the peninsula, including the re-issuance of official documents, execution of court decisions, as well as the return of expropriated property.
“Over ten years of work on reports on the human rights situation on the peninsula, the Russian Federation has neglected its obligations under international humanitarian law caused serious long-term damage to the people of Crimea,” the report’s authors emphasize. “A similar picture is emerging in other parts of Ukraine: eight years after the occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea, the Russian Federation began the occupation and subsequent illegal annexation of areas of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, where OHCHR recorded violations of a similar nature.”