23/04/2022 14:53

Commissioner: Rashists subject citizens of Ukraine to grueling and degrading treatment during forced deportation

By "evacuating" from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, the rashists are forcing our citizens to go through a "filtration" that lasts for several days.

There are four filtration camps near the city of Mariupol, where people are detained before being deported to Russia.

Before reaching such camps, people are forced to go through several checkpoints with a thorough check of documents.

In the camps themselves, our citizens are interrogated for many hours, the occupiers check their documents, phones, personal belongings, take photos and fingerprints.  The rashists are carefully looking for civil servants, representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the police.

According to the results of the "filtering", those who passed it are issued the relevant papers.  The fate of citizens who did not pass the "filter" is unknown.

At the russian border, people are also thoroughly searched, documents and belongings are checked.  Interrogations last up to several hours, conducted by FSB officers.

Ukrainians who are trying to travel to other countries through the occupied Crimea are undergoing similar procedures.

"Evacuated" Ukrainians are taken to the depressed northern regions of Russia.  On April 21, the russians took 308 deported Mariupol residents to Vladivostok, 90 of whom were children.  People were placed in schools and dormitories.  Then it is planned to place in different settlements of the Primorsky Krai.

In addition, the russian authorities say that our citizens have "problems with the russian language", so children are going to learn the language under a "special" program.

The introduction of such exhausting and humiliating procedures during the so-called "evacuation" and the forced deportation of Ukrainians is a gross violation of the 1949 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 crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine.