03/04/2022 14:13

Commissioner: the aggressor country continues to deport Ukrainian citizens from the temporarily occupied territory

According to the local authorities of the city of Mariupol - almost 40 thousand inhabitants were deported to the "DPR" or Russia.

Counting deportees is complicated by the fact that Ukrainian documents are confiscated from people.

Rashists separate parents from children.  17 children who were being treated were taken out of the hospital in Mariupol.  Their parents stayed and they were evacuated to the city of Zaporizhia.

Some of the forcibly deported Mariupol residents were found in Estonia, where they entered from the territory of the Russian Federation.

In addition to the residents of Mariupol, people from the Kherson, Kharkiv, and Luhansk regions reached Estonia in the same way through Russia.

According to them, some of these people decided to go through Russia because they could not go to Western Ukraine.  At the same time, there were people who were forcibly sent to Russia and then allowed to travel at their own discretion.

The occupying country of the Russian Federation grossly violates the provisions of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which prohibits the forced relocation or deportation of persons from the occupied territories.

I appeal to the International Committee of the Red Cross to take all possible measures to assist in the return of Ukrainians illegally deported to Russia and to open safe humanitarian corridors from the regions of hostilities.

I appeal to the UN Commission for Investigation Human Rights Violations during the Russian Military Invasion of Ukraine and the expert mission set up by the OSCE participating States in accordance with the Moscow Mechanism to take into account these facts of Russian human rights violations in Ukraine.