cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/31248267
Oleksandra Romantsova […] is an economist and the Executive Director of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. The Center for Civil Liberties was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, shared along with the Russian organisation Memorial and Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski (who is still in jail). The Center, under the leadership of Oleksandra Matviychuk, works in documenting Russia’s war crimes, providing legal assistance to Ukrainians and advocating for Ukraine internationally.
[…]
For the last decade – that is since Russia’s annexation of Crimea [in 2014] – the NGO has been collecting testimonies from those who have lived in the territories under Russian control. Today, about 20 % of the Ukrainian territory is occupied by Russia.
[…]
Oleksandra Romantsova: … it’s impossible for NGOs to work in so-called Luhansk, Donetsk People’s Republic or Russian-occupied Crimea. What have we found? Mass graves, torture chambers … We have documented more than 20,000 war crimes between 2014 and 2020.
[…]
For us, the war has been going on for 11 years, there are millions of victims and witnesses of war crimes. A generation of children has grown up in the occupied territories. Some of them are now soldiers in the Russian army. You have to understand that it’s not just a question of changing the flag: the consequences are far-reaching.
[…]
When we talk about the “occupation”, we are talking about a million people who are suffering: victims of war crimes, kidnapping, torture, rape. People who are sent to prisons in Russia.
[…]
The same is happening in Crimea. Young people who were 14-16 years old in Crimea in 2014 are now joining the Russian army. The problem is huge: some Ukrainian citizens do not exist in Ukrainian registers. Russia, for example, stopped providing information on orphans in 2017.
[…]
This is a trademark of the Russian army and the Russian state today: they don’t care about people. For example, they don’t bother to return the bodies of Russian soldiers to their families. There is this common idea that every country thinks about its population, takes care of them, tries to have as few deaths as possible… This does not apply to Russia.
[…]
It is important to understand that this is a pattern that repeats itself and that we are seeing now in the occupied territories, but it goes back to 2014. Our Russian colleagues who documented war crimes in Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, including [the organisation] Memorial, are working to compare how the Russian army has acted in Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine. There is a recurring pattern: they don’t care about civilians, there are war crimes. They don’t respect the status of prisoners of war.
[…]
We have data on war crimes and other crimes from two main sources. Firstly, from people who have left and who give testimony. Or from people who bring us data.
For example, a teacher near Mariupol fled through Russian territory and brought a USB stick with data on her pupils to try to understand where they had ended up. Sometimes it is possible to communicate through secure channels on the Internet and we can get testimonies. And the second one, which is really important, is the Russian soldiers, who are sharing a lot of evidence on social networks and Telegram channels, boasting about it.
[…]
Furthermore, and above all, you have to understand that when the occupation becomes stable and the Russian forces control the territory, they try to build a system based on fear.
Anyone can be abducted at any time. I think it could be similar to some of the stories we’ve heard about Latin America in the past: people who disappear in a moment, someone comes along with guns and you’re gone.
[…]
In Crimea no international mission has been allowed access, they have forcibly disappeared more than 300 people, they have blocked all international journalists. And they have expelled all kinds of churches except the Russian Orthodox Church. And the same thing has happened in Donbas. They are killing and kidnapping people. The occupation is a disaster.
[…]