The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expresses its strong protest in connection with massive illegal searches of dwellings and detentions of representatives of the Crimean Tatar people that took place today in the Simferopol and Bilogirsky districts of Crimea, temporarily occupied by Russia. A new wave of repressions is exactly the way Russia is responding to the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the UN General Assembly resolution 68/262 "Territorial integrity of Ukraine".
The large-scale nature of the persecutions demonstrate Russia's wish to further strengthen the repressions and intimidations of Ukrainian citizens living in temporarily occupied territories. We are concerned by the reports stating that during the searches in the Kamyanka sub-district of Simferopol the Russian invaders tried to beat local residents who were nearby.
We are particularly concerned about the fact that the Russian occupying authorities have chosen again the so-called "Hizb ut-Tahrir case" as the occasion for their punitive actions which has already been used to fabricate cases against Crimean Tatar activists and their subsequent convictions.
That is why we do not exclude that today's events may become a start for a new wave of court prosecutions of Crimean Tatars and call on the international community to respond immediately to the actions of the Russian occupation authorities. The political, economic and sanction pressure on the aggressor-state must be strengthened in order to force Russia to stop violations of human rights in the temporarily occupied Crimea, to release illegally detained citizens of Ukraine and accelerate the de-occupation of the Crimea and Sevastopol.
The Russian Federation must implement the UN General Assembly resolutions "Territorial integrity of Ukraine" of 27 March 2014, "Situation of human rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine" of 19 December 2016, 19 December 2017 and 22 December 2018, as well as the Order of the International Court of Justice on provisional measures in the case concerning Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Ukraine vs the Russian Federation).