36^th session of Human Rights Council

Item 3

Clustered interactive dialogue with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances

Intervention by the delegation of Ukraine

September 11, 2017

Mr President,

Ukraine welcomes conducting the dialogue with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

Among the wide-scale human rights violations in the occupied Crimea and in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by the Russian-backed terrorists, acts of abduction and disappearance of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars are numerous.

Moreover, this covert policy goes extraterritorial. I would like to draw your attention to the groundless arrest by the Russian authorities, in the territory of a third State, of 19-year-old citizen of Ukraine Pavlo Grib, his detention on August 25, 2017 and imprisonment in Krasnodar, the Russian Federation. In clear violation of international law, the Ukrainian side received the official information on it only two weeks later. All this time neither his relatives nor Ukrainian consular officers were unaware of Pavlo Grib’s whereabouts.

From the very beginning of the Russian occupation of Crimea 21 representatives of Crimean Tatars were kidnapped, 9 are still missing, 3 were lately found dead.

As a result of the armed actions of the combined Russian-terrorist forces in the East of Ukraine, more than 400 people are missing.

In the light of WGEID’s forthcoming visit to Ukraine in 2018, I would like to express the readiness of Ukrainian relevant authorities to grant their support and to fully cooperate in conducting its mission in Ukraine.

Thank you, Mr President.