Crimea return back to Ukraine to be recognized the most distinguished humanitarian action in history, says Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze

During three years since Russia illegally annexed Crimea civil rights and freedoms have been destroyed completely, and today the peninsula can serve as an illustration of complete human rights violations. This was stated by Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze in her address to participants of the International Forum "Crimea under occupation: consequences for Ukraine and the World" on February 25.

“Occupying authorities are brutally violating human rights and using all methods to prolong doing that. Freedom House assessed Crimea as partly free. According to the data 17 people disappeared, 12 people were killed, 39 people became political prisoners, 10 people out of this number has already been imprisoned,” noted Vice Prime Minister. These people suffered for their political, ideological views, belonging to the Crimean Tatars, a "bad" habit of freedom of speech in Ukraine, because these citizens wanted to remain who they were – the citizens of Ukraine and free people in the free world".

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze highlighted that occupying authorities intimidate and deny rights of the residents of Crimea to the freedom of religion, include Ukrainian activists to a list of terrorists, prevent the right to peaceful assembly, persecute national and cultural representative bodies of Crimean Tatars and the media. She noted that the greatest action of cynicism of Kremlin was to put the Mejlis on the list of extremist organizations."All this is happening amid transformation of Crimea into a militarized zone,” underlined the Vice Prime Minister. And the worst thing is that the peninsula is turning into a fear territory. Systematic violations of the rights and freedoms of people in today’s Crimea must encourage the world to act unanimously and increase pressure on Russia."

The Vice Prime Minister stressed that it is not only about the security of the region, but about the future of the entire world: "History has convincingly demonstrated that hybrid occupation, the propaganda campaigns, fables of supervised mass media and diplomacy of double standards are all leading to concentration camps... This is a test for the entire free world of our ability to resist the destruction of human rights and freedoms. And the return of Crimea back to Ukraine, I am convinced, will be the most distinguished humanitarian action in history! "

In the forum, namely, were participating, Member of Parliament, First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Iryna Heraschenko, Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for the Affairs of Crimean Tatars, leader of Crimean Tatar People Mustafa Dzhemilev, Minister of Information Policy of UkraineYurii Stets, Minister for Temporary Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine Vadym Chernysh, Member of Parliament, Head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Verkhovna Rada Hanna Hopko and members of diplomatic missions of partner countries to Ukraine. The Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine organized the forum which will last for two days. Moreover, representatives of the media, NGOs, lawyers and human rights activists are taking active part in the abovementioned forum.