Head of the Permanent Delegation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Artur Herasymov told the Information Office that the decision of the so-called Supreme Court of the Russia-occupied Crimea on banning the body of Crimean Tatars’ self-government, which was made public on Thursday, points to a new level of stigmatization of the Crimean Tatar community and must be abolished, said today Chair of the Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Isabel Santos (MP, Portugal).
"Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, de facto the authorities unleashed a systematic campaign of discrimination against [Crimean] Tatars, using charges of "extremism" to justify repression," Santos said. "There is nothing extremist in the fact that ethnic minority speaks in defense of its civil, political and linguistic rights, and the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people has been engaged in this activity since 1991. The Mejlis is guided by the principles of non-violence and the illegal ban on the Mejlis by the court is another violation of the fundamental principles on the Crimean peninsula."
She expressed deep concern over the fact that de facto the authorities have made a step towards the prosecution of the Crimean Tatars as an ethnic group and called for the abolishment of their decision.
"I call for the abolishment of the decision in order to let the Mejlis to continue implementing its important task," she said.
During the winter meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in 2015, former leader of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, MP Mustafa Dzhemiliev said that thousands of representatives of the Crimean Tatar people relocated to mainland Ukraine in protest to attempts by the authorities to limit de facto their political and linguistic autonomy since the annexation by Russia in 2014. He called on the OSCE and the international community to focus efforts on returning the peninsula under the sovereignty of Ukraine.
A.Herasymov said, it is expected that the crisis in and around Ukraine, including the situation in Crimea, will be addressed at the annual summer meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Tbilisi (Georgia).