04/05/2022 16:09

Russian occupiers terrorize Ukrainian farmers

It became known that the occupiers were creating "collective farms" in the Luhansk region and forcing local farmers to transfer their own agricultural machinery to their ownership.

As a result of the farmer's refusal to comply with the above requirement, the rashists shot his house.

In the Melitopol district of the Zaporozhye region, the occupiers are buying grain at twice the price.  Farmers who refuse to cooperate with the invaders are threatened with physical violence and confiscation of grain along with agricultural machinery.

At an agricultural enterprise in the town of Kamyanka-Dniprovska, Zaporizhia Oblast, the occupiers stole more than 60 tons of wheat and exported it by truck belonging to the enterprise.

In total, the rashist horde exported about 400 tons of grain from the temporarily occupied regions of Zaporizhia Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, and Luhansk Oblast, which is one-third of the region's total reserves.

Violations of property rights and threats to confiscate private property in the occupied territories are a violation of Articles 31 and 33 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.  They strictly prohibit the occupying State from applying coercion of a physical or moral nature to persons in the temporarily occupied territories, as well as from looting and confiscating property.

Terror, cruel and degrading treatment of civilians in the occupied territories is a war crime under the Statute of the International Military Tribunal and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and a violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

I appeal to the UN Commission for Investigation Human Rights Violations during the Russian military invasion of Ukraine to take into account these facts of war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine by the occupying state.