Oral presentation of the 29th OHCHR report on the situation in Ukraine
Statement by H.E.Yurii Klymenko,
Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Ukraine
Geneva, 17 June 2020
Madam President,
I thank the Deputy High Commissioner for her presentation and update and take this opportunity to congratulate her with this important position and express our delegation’s support to her activities.
The 29th OHCHR Report demonstrates once again the terrible consequences of the Russian armed aggression against my country.
The annex to the report based on testimonies of civilians illegally held by the Russian occupation administrations in Donbas is being read as a horror book. Beatings, electric shocks, asphyxiation, sexual violence, penetrating injuries, traumatic removal of body parts, deprivation of water, food, sleep, mock executions – this is not even a full list of cruel tortures applied to the hostages of ‘Izoliatsiia’, a former cultural platform of creativeness and hope turned by the occupying power into the factory of despair and pain .
Against all the odds, my country spares no efforts to stop the Russian aggression, which has brought sufferings to people living in Donbas. Ukraine continues to work intensely within both the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk and Normandy format to restore rights and freedoms of people currently being under the Russian occupation. Let me be clear, we have direct negotiations with the Russian Federation as a party to the ongoing international armed conflict and not with representatives of illegal armed groups, who are fully dependent on Moscow, have no say, and implement Russian strategy of destabilization of Ukraine. Russia is exercising full military, financial, administrative and other forms of control over this region. This should be the basic premise of any assessment of the nature and drivers of the developments in the region since 2014.
That is why we hope that the OHCHR expressing in its reports recommendations to “both parties involved in the hostilities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions” will do not further neglect directly mentioning the Russian Federation. It is high time to call a spade a spade. Placing responsibility for human rights violations on Moscow-controlled proxies not only helps the Russian Federation to escape responsibility for atrocities committed in the Donbas region, but also to continue gross human rights violations under their guise.
Even more, being recognized by the international community, including the UN General Assembly as an occupant of a part of Ukrainian territories, the Russian Federation persistently tries to distort the truth and impose its own false narratives of the origins of dire developments in Donbas. To that end, Moscow has unleashed a wide-scale global campaign to legitimize its proxies and vilify Ukraine.
And such a cynical approach is employed not only in the case of Donbas.
Tightening its grip on the illegally occupied Crimean Peninsula, the occupying power commits war crimes, mass violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.
As corroborated in the OHCHR report, a mere display of Crimean Tatar or Ukrainian identity in the occupied peninsula is a serious crime in the eyes of the invaders. Politically motivated prosecution based on fabricated charges has become a common practice for the Russian occupation authorities.
Most recently, the true price of "justice" of the occupiers’ judicial system has been experienced by Nariman Memedeminov, Denys Kashuk, Edem Bekirov, Server Mustafayev, Edem Smailov, Marlen Asanov, Seyran Saliyev, Tymur Ibragimov, Server Zekir’yayev, Memet Belyalov, Ernes Ametov, Enver Seitosmanov and many others. We invite special procedures mandate holders to pay a particular attention to persecuted human rights defenders for their peaceful activities in the occupied Crimea. Russia’s IHL violations also include illegal conscription to the Russian armed forces. The illegal draft has already affected 21000 persons. As a result of the active militarization of Crimea, the local population is being replaced by the citizens of the Russian Federation, mainly members of the Russian army and security forces, who have been resettled from the territory of Russia.
As a part of efforts to legitimize the attempted annexation of Crimea, Russia pursues a systematic policy to change the demographic structure on the peninsula, which is accompanied by massive repression campaign, especially targeting the Crimean Tatar community, forced passportization and resettling of the Russian citizens to the occupied territory.
To conceal the truth, Russia continues to block a proper and unhindered access of international monitoring missions, primarily by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol pursuant to UN General Assembly resolutions 71/205, 72/190, 73/263 and 74/168.
Even under the circumstances of COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian authorities are thinking only about their gains. One of the evidences is the Russian President`s decree of March 20 on depriving Ukrainian citizens of the possibility to own land in the temporarily occupied Crimea that clearly violates IHL.
At the same time Russia as the occupying power has failed to take the necessary steps, including those envisaged in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to combat the spread of COVID-19 among the population of the occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas, thus breaching its respective obligations under IHL.
There is a serios concern that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health security in Russia's prisons and occupied territories might be systemic, posing a severe threat to the health and life of illegally detained Ukrainian citizens. We urge immediate medical examination of our detainees and providing them with a qualified medical assistance in places of detention.
Unfortunately, today Russia considers the pandemic crisis as an opportunity to attempt to remove the issue of its aggression against Ukraine from the international agenda, legitimize its gains and occupation, and eventually lift sanctions.
In this regard, I wish to stress that not a single sanctions’ package, imposed on Russia, prevents it from duly protecting people's health and contributing to the global fight against coronavirus.
Pandemic will fortunately pass. Accountability for crimes and abuses must prevail.
I thank you.