As human rights activist and lawyer Sergei Zayets reported on April 29, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a decision (view) in the case “Bratsylo, Golovko and Konyukhov v. Russia” 3022/2017, concerning the forcible imposition of Russian “citizenship” by the occupiers in the Crimea on persons in places of unfreedom, and the transfer of such “convicts” “to serve their sentences” to Russia. The case involved a person who received a “sentence” in April 2014 in occupied Sevastopol and two persons whose Simferopol sentence in 2013 was “revised” by an “appeal court” under the occupation.
Previously, human rights activists pointed out that more than 450 people who, as of March 2014, were in places of detention in Crimea, unsuccessfully appealed to the occupiers with a demand to transfer them to mainland Ukraine as Ukrainian citizens. In its decision in case 3022/2017, the UN Committee recognized that the applicants fell into the category of protected persons under the IV Geneva Convention and should not have moved from the occupied territory.
The Committee in this decision found that the forced “granting of Russian citizenship” and the forced transfer from the Crimea to Russia of the applicants violated part 1 of article 9, part 4 of article 12, part 1 of article 15, part 1 of article 17 and article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights, that is, it established the fact of discrimination against the applicants in their rights to freedom, to private life, to stay in their country, and their conviction without proper grounds.
This decision was the first “Crimean case” related to the occupation to be considered in essence by the UN Committee, and it will obviously continue to be an important legal precedent.
