As part of the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference, convened by the OSCE ODIHR, experts from our Association, Professor Borys Babin and Liya Motrechko, actively participated in the side event “Racial Discrimination in the Occupied Territories of Ukraine as a Systemic Challenge to the Human Dimension”, organized by the Crimean Tatar Resource Center.
During the event, the Chairman of the Center’s Board Eskender Bariiev, Center’s experts Tetyana Savchuk and Lyudmila Korotkykh, as well as relatives of political prisoners Mamut Belyalov and Anatoly Kobzar, Fadme-Sherfe Belyalova and Natalia Fluris discussed the systemic discrimination of Crimean Tatars under occupation, not as individual violations, but as a deliberately constructed administrative practice aimed at destroying the collective rights and the very identity of the indigenous people of Ukraine.
In this dimension, the speakers discussed about the aggressor’s ban on the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, the persecution of activists, pressure on religious communities, and politically motivated repression. Professor Babin reminded the participants and guests of the side event about the processes of protecting the system of self-government of the Crimean Tatar people in the European Court of Human Rights and outlined the main stages of the relevant work with individual applications to the Court of members of the Mejlis, local mejlises and bodies of the Kurultai of the Crimean Tatar People.
Lia Motrechko initiated a discussion of the role of civil society and individual activists in protecting the rights of victims of repression, and Dincer Geafer, Deputy State Secretary of the Department of Inter-Ethnic Relations of the Government of Romania, raised the issue of the influence of Russian propaganda and special services on Crimean Tatar communities in the European Union countries.
