01 November 2017, 10:00
From the UA Parliament’s rostrum, Ilmi Umerov and Akhtem Chiygoz, the Crimean Tatars Mejilis deputy heads, called on the Euronest PA parliamentarians to intensify sanctions against Russia
Ilmi Umerov and Akhtem Chiygoz, the deputy heads of the Crimean Tatars representative body - the Mejilis - both of whom were jailed as political prisoners by the Russian occupation authorities in the Crimea, arrived in Kyiv on Oct. 27 following their release from jail on the peninsula on Oct. 25.
They called on the delegates of the EU Parliamentary Assembly-Eastern Partnership (Euronest PA) to give a boost to further intensification of the sanctions against Russia, and “not to lose sight of the many others, including other Crimean Tatars, who have been detained by the de-facto Russian authorities for their opposition to the illegal annexation of Crimea. We call once again for the immediate release of all Ukrainian political prisoners on the Crimean Peninsula and in Russia. We have a favour to ask of you. Please take note, please, never, in no way put the issue off your political agenda. The sanctions should not be neither slackened nor narrowed. And, of course, they ought not to be cancelled. The aggressive actions the Russian Federation has committed must be punished”.
Akhtem Chiygoz,
in his turn, has stressed today’s Russia is bizarre, lawless land by
nature, the earth of terror, and Ukraine is bound to stop this stream of
aggression.
Both of the deputy heads of the Mejilis also called on the representatives of the Euronest PA to combine efforts aimed to liberate all Ukrainian political prisoners on the Crimean Peninsula and in Russia at the earliest possible moment.