Man looking for Ukrainian children tortured in Crimea

A man has been detained and tortured in Russian-occupied Crimea as he tried to find out the whereabouts of deported Ukrainian children, Kateryna Rashevska from the NGO Regional Centre for Human Rights said at the OSCE Human Dimension Conference.

Source: Krym.Realii, a Radio Liberty project 

Details: Rashevska said that after that, civil society activists decided that they would not collect such data on the peninsula, as it is very dangerous for those who are ready to help in the search.

At the same time, she said that a lot of data is released by Russian propagandists, which helps to get an idea of the number of children and the specifics of their forced displacement. 

In a number of cases, the Russian authorities subsequently changed the children's data so that they could not be found.

Quote from Rashevska: "We need to act. Russia must fulfil the requirements for the identification of children under the Geneva Convention. 

To do this, everyone should put pressure on Russia, including by adopting a separate UN General Assembly resolution on this issue. And then appoint a third party to monitor and promote the repatriation of children to Ukraine."

Details: Human rights activists said that a total of 19,546 Ukrainian children have been identified as forcibly deported to Russian and Belarusian territory. Within a year and a half since the start of the full-scale war in February 2022, about 300 children have been brought back. 

Experts estimated that if this pace continues, it will take about 80 years to bring back the last of the children. 

Civil society activists are convinced that even in a year it will be too late because Ukrainian children are being brainwashed, which will make them afraid to come back to Ukraine.

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