"Mass violations of civil, political, national and religious rights of aboriginal peoples in the Russian Federation are an open disregard to international law and should be subject to consideration at the international level," stated, in particular, in a resolution of the roundtable "Violation of native peoples’ rights in the Russian Federation", held by the committee recently.
In attendance, there were members of parliament Hanna Hopko, Borys Tarasiuk, Refat Chubarov, Serhii Vysotskyi, Ihor Lutsenko, representatives of aboriginal peoples of the Russian Federation, political emigrants from Russia, Ukrainian human rights champions, experts and journalists.
“The problem we are considering concerns millions of people in the neighboring state, and the future of both the Russian Federation and the whole region of Eastern Europe and North Asia depends on its solution," said the committee head Hanna Hopko in her opening address. According to her, "this is a problem of systematic violations of rights of peoples who have always lived on their own lands, whose territories were in their time included in the Russian or Soviet state. These are the peoples of the North Caucasus, Idel-Ural, Siberia and other regions of the Russian Federation".
"This is a promising direction of our foreign policy. After all, nobody in the world understands this problem better than Ukrainians do," said Ihor Lutsenko later on.
During the meeting, there were adduced numerous violations of Russian indigenous peoples’ rights to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, education in their native languages as well as cruel persecution by the Russian authorities of all those who dare to systematically oppose the Kremlin's assimilation policy.
The participants of the meeting expressed solidarity
with the representatives of national movements fighting for legitimate rights
of their peoples, and also supported the initiative of the head of the Mejlis
of the Crimean Tatar People Refat Chubarov about the creation in the Verkhovna
Rada of an inter-factional parliamentary association for protection of Russian indigenous
peoples’ rights.
"We urge the Ukrainian authorities, in particular, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, representatives of Ukraine in international organizations and inter-parliamentary assemblies, to broach before the European and world community the problem with indigenous peoples in the Russian Federation and the need for effective protection of their rights," runs the roundtable resolutions.
Summing up the sitting results, the head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs H.Hopko upheld proposals made during the round table, in particular - for a relevant appeal of the Verkhovna Rada to the community of nations and consideration of the issue at a committee meeting.