Amnesty International report: De facto authorities in Crimea and Donbas arrest and execute their critics

This is stated in the Amnesty International Report 2017/18, which documents the state of the world’s human rights in 159 countries and territories during 2017. The report was presented in Kyiv and Kharkiv on February 2017.

"The de facto authorities in the separatist-controlled territories continued to unlawfully detain and imprison their critics. In November, the de facto Supreme Court in Donetsk ordered a man to be put to death. In Russian-occupied Crimea, critics of the authorities faced intimidation, harassment and criminal prosecution," the human rights activists note.

The Amnesty International stresses that Russia continues to deny the international human rights mechanisms the access to the peninsula.

"The clampdown on the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly continued in Crimea. The authorities continued to predominantly target ethnic Crimean Tatars. The Russian Security Services raided dozens of Crimean Tatar homes, purportedly looking for illegal weapons, drugs or “extremist” literature, as part of their campaign to intimidate critics of the peninsula’s occupation. The few lawyers willing to take up cases in defence of critical voices in Crimea faced harassment by the Russian authorities," Amnesty International states.

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