In the framework of our permanent cooperation with UN bodies and agencies, we continued cooperation with OHCHR and Special Rapporteurs in the framework of elaborating the documents on the ongoing session of the Human Rights Council and next General Assembly activities.
Now the UN published our previous submissions for the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions for his report A/HRC/59/54 about challenges for the rights of families of civil victims, killed by Russian forces in occupied territories and about aggression-related challenges for education safety, for the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education for her presented report A/HRC/59/41.
We described the results of those submissions at the 59th session of the Human Rights Council before, and now some other ARC’s documents, relevant to issues of victims of Russian aggression have been published by the UN.
We also informed the UN OHCHR about procedures, established by Ukraine for the reintegration of victims of Russian repressions in occupied territories, for the Office’s comprehensive study on human rights and the social reintegration of persons released from detention.
This ARC’s submission, also published at UN official sources now, reminded on such issues of the Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, as discrimination, xenophobia, and hate speech against victims of repressions, are the main human rights challenges arising from systemic, structural, and institutional Nazism of Russia-controlled structures against citizens of Ukraine, including belonging to minorities, and Ukrainian-speaking persons, including deported and displaced ones.
ARC’s submission reminded the UN about the February statement of UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Professor Alice Jill Edwards, that urged Russian authorities to provide immediate and comprehensive medical care to several Ukrainian civilian detainees, originally from Crimea, who are currently being held in Russia, tortured by the aggressor.
Regarding victims of Russian repressions, released from custody, the main challenges are the next FSB and other punitive control over those persons on Russia-occupied territories and extremely hard ways for them to leave those territories and to resettle to third countries or to Ukrainian-controlled territories, ARC’s submission added.
ARC’s submission described Ukraine’s official plans on countering Russian aggression from the Crimea, which included aid to victims, and pointed to processes of implementation of the relevant Law of Ukraine, 2022 No. 2010-IX, and Governmental Resolution, 2022 No. 1281, including the case of Russia-released former prisoners, who were the applicants in case 420/7376/20, presented there in Ukraine’s courts by our Association’s experts.
Duty to protect such victims, being under Russian control, from xenophobia and hate speech, that conjunct aggressor’s calls for racial discrimination and calls for aggressive war, genocide, and war crimes in interstate conflict conditions, is also important for UN structures, our submission stressed.
Also, the UN published ARC’s submission now to the above-mentioned UN Rapporteur Professor Alice J. Edwards, about aggressor’s hostage-taking as a form of torture for their relatives.
That submission stressed that since the outbreak of the war in 2014 and especially after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the practice of enforced disappearances, kidnapping displaced persons, and torturing hostages from the local civil population, has become one of the most common methods of aggressor’s intimidation of citizens in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Our cooperation with UN bodies in issues of aid to civil hostages as victims of Russian aggression will be continued.
