At an OSCE human rights conference, Kateryna Rashevska, representative of the human rights group Regional Centre for Human Rights said that a man who tried to find out the whereabouts of deported Ukrainian children was detained and tortured in Russia-occupied Crimea, Krym.Realiyi reported.
Rashevska stated Russian propagandists publishe a lot of data, which helps to know the number of stolen by Russia children and specifics of their forced displacement. Sometimes, Russian authorities allegedly alter the children’s information to make them impossible to find.
However, she told that after this incident of torturing, activists decided not to gather such data in Russia-occupied Crimea anymore because “it is too dangerous for those willing to assist in the search.”
The representative of the human rights group Regional Centre for Human Rights claimed that “Russia must comply with the Geneva Convention’s identification requirements for children.
“Action must be taken. Everyone must pressure them, including adopting a separate UN General Assembly Resolution on this. Then appoint a third party to monitor and facilitate the children’s repatriation to Ukraine,” Rashevska added.
According to human rights activists, 19 546 Ukrainian children have been identified as forcibly deported to Russia and Belarus. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, about 300 children have been returned. Experts estimate that at this rate it would take around 80 years to return the last victim
Activists insist even a year would be too late, as Ukrainian children are already being “brainwashed” into fearing a return to Ukraine.
Grigory Karasin, chairman of the international committee in the Russian Federation Council said that since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014, Russians have brought about 700,000 Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to Russia.
Read also:
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- House of Commons of Canada condemns deportation of Ukrainian children by Russian troops
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