36^th session of the UN Human Rights Council

Agenda item 4

General debates

Intervention by the Permanent Representative of Ukraine

Ambassador Yurii Klymenko

(September 19, 2017)

 

Mr. President,

Over three years of illegal occupation of Crimea and military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine have been marked by blatant violations of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms in Crimea and in certain areas of Donbas.

Ukrainians were kidnapped, arrested and interrogated by Russian authorities, using brutal violence, torture, medical mistreatment and psychological pressure.

The most recent case of a 19-year-old Ukrainian Pavlo Gryb, who was kidnapped on the territory of the third State and transferred to the detention facility in the Russian Federation, has become yet another plain-spoken example of Russia’s state policy of abduction and hostage-taking.

On September 11, the Russian occupation authorities sentenced a Ukrainian citizen, a Crimean Tatar Mr. Akhtem Chygoz to 8 years in a strict regime colony.

We call on the international human rights monitoring mechanisms to assist and to use all possibilities to release of the illegally detained Ukrainian citizens – political prisoners in Russia, including Oleh Sentsov, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Stanislav Klykh, Mykola Karpyuk, Roman Sushchenko and Pavlo Gryb, as well as Akhtem Chygoz, Mykola Semena in the occupied Crimea.

We condemn the continuing Russia’s shameful practice of imprisonment the Ukrainian citizens for political reasons and urge the UN Member States to strengthen the political and diplomatic pressure upon the Russian Federation for their release.

 

I thank you.