Residents of the temporarily occupied Izyum in Kharkiv region are being forcibly removed to the territory of the Russian Federation by the Russian occupants. This was reported by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Lyudmila Denisova in Telegram.
"Residents of temporarily occupied Izyum in Kharkiv region Russian occupiers are forcibly taken to the territory of the Russian Federation. The enemy creates filtration camps and corridors through which they deport Ukrainian citizens to Russia," said the Ombudsman.
She stressed that this is not the first time such tactics have been used by Russian troops.
"After bringing the city to a critical situation, the enemy offers a conditional corridor to the Russian Federation, ostensibly to save people, leaving people no choice. Now the Russian media are reporting that they have removed 615,000 people from the territory of Ukraine, of whom 121,000 are children. Such treatment of civilians is a crime against humanity and a war crime as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court," the Ombudsman stressed.
Denisova stressed that the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms guarantees that no one can be expelled from the territory of the state of which he is a citizen. That Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the UN International Criminal Court qualifies "deportation or forcible transfer of population" as a crime against humanity, which entails international criminal liability.
"I appeal to the UN Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations during the Russian military invasion of Ukraine and the expert mission established by the OSCE participating States under the Moscow Mechanism to take these facts of war crimes and Russian violations of human rights in Ukraine into account," the Ombudsman said.
