For the first time in the past few years, the mass practice of forced disappearances of citizens has returned to the occupied Crimea.
This was reported by the head of the ZMINA Human Rights Center Tetyana Pechonchyk during the discussion program of the "Crimean Platform" parliamentary summit in Croatia, "Radio Svoboda" ["Radio Liberty"] reports.
According to her, the occupiers are keeping a number of citizens in Crimea without access to a lawyer and relatives.
"They are moving some of the detainees from the occupied Kherson region. In particular, as human rights defenders, we have information that a number of citizens were subjected to this practice of enforced disappearance: Yaroslav Zhuk, Iryna Horobtsova, Serhii Tsyhypa, Ivan Kozlov, Mykola Petrovskyi, Maria Harcia-Kalatayut, Ruslan Abdurakhmanov, Abaz Kurtamet. However, no one can say with certainty now exactly how many people are victims of enforced disappearances and are in prisons in occupied Crimea," Pechonchyk noted.
She added that the persecution of independent lawyers and journalists has increased on the peninsula. At least 14 civilian journalists are currently known to be political prisoners.
In total, there are more than 150 Ukrainians imprisoned for political reasons in Crimea, 30 of them were imprisoned already after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.