Activist: 5,000 human rights abuses recorded in Crimea during Russian occupation

Over 5,000 human rights violations have been recorded in Crimea since the start of the Russian occupation in 2014, mainly against the Crimean Tatar community, Ukrinform reported on Oct. 15, citing human rights activist Alim Aliyev.

"Russia is focusing its attention on the Crimean Tatars, branding them as potential terrorists and criminals," Aliyev, the deputy director of the Ukrainian Institute, said during the Global Crimea: Understanding Ukraine through the South conference.

"When it comes to internally displaced persons, to refugees, almost 70,000 people have left Crimea over the past nine and a half years," he said.

"But we also see a reverse process, when over 700,000 people arrived in Crimea from Russia, and these are already different people," Aliyev stressed, noting that the occupied peninsula became Moscow's "model of colonization."

Russia occupied Crimea in 2014 after the EuroMaidan Revolution ousted the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Since then, the occupation authorities have been carrying out repressions against pro-Ukrainian activists and Crimean Tatars.

Members of the Crimean Tatar community are regularly indicted with trumped-up charges of extremism and terrorism and sentenced to lengthy prison terms in kangaroo courts.

In the shadow of war, Kremlin continues terrorizing Crimean Tatars

They usually come at four or five in the morning. Men in uniform and with guns pull up in large vehicles. The dogs start barking. The family wakes up, knowing exactly what is about to happen. The house is searched. Phones and computers are taken away. And so is the

The Kyiv IndependentAnastasiia Lapatina