Lithuania Draws HRC Attention to Violations of Crimean Tatars' Rights
On 20 September 2017, Lithuanian delegation took the floor in the UN Human Rights Council's Interactive Dialogue on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In its statement, Lithuania drew the attention of the Council to the ongoing violations of individual and collective rights of the Crimean Tatars by the Russian occupation authorites in Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. Members of the indigenous Crimean Tatar community are systematically subjected to arbitrary detention and discrimination, their representative body, Mejlis, has been banned on allegation of extremism. That contradicts the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples whose 10th anniversay is celebrated this year.
The problem of the rights of the Crimean Tatars was also raised in the Dialogue by the delegation of Ukraine.
