Persecution in Crimea on Agenda of PACE Autumn Session

The autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will take place in Strasbourg from 27 to 30 September 2021 in a hybrid format.

The main topics of the autumn session will be the right to healthy environment, climate, and migration.

Items to be discussed include the situation in Afghanistan; the consequences of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan; and the issue of migration pressure on the borders of Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland with Belarus. In total, at least seven reports will be heard.

Ukraine requested a debate on Russia’s political persecution of indigenous peoples in occupied Crimea. A letter was sent to PACE President Rik Daems.

Earlier, Rustem Umerov, a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the PACE and a member of the Verkhovna Rada, said that Ukraine had submitted such a request after a new wave of searches, detentions, and arrests of Crimean Tatars on the occupied peninsula. Among those arrested is Crimean Tatar activist and politician Nariman Dzhelyal.

As a reminder, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution on the rights of Crimean Tatars in Crimea on 23 June, which, in particular, contains “clear signals about the need to observe the rights of Crimean Tatars in the occupied Crimea.”

Bohdan Marusyak