This week International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) will submit a communication to the office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Crimea. This communication is the result of two years of documentation work carried out by IPHR and its partners and is based on a detailed report published in September 2016. At a press briefing to be held at the Interfax-Ukraine news agency in Kyiv on 17 November 2016, the ICC submission and the documentation work of IPHR and partners will be presented.
IPHR, together with the organizations Truth Hounds, Crimea SOS and the Crimean Contact Group for Human Rights have been documenting grave human rights violations and international crimes in Crimea since it was illegally annexed by Russia in March 2014. This work is aimed at facilitating the identification, prosecution and punishment of those responsible for murders, torture, enforced disappearances and other gross abuses. As there are significant political and practical obstacles to domestic investigations/prosecutions, the ICC is seen as an alternative venue for seeking accountability for these crimes. IPHR’s communication provides evidence of: seven murders, 15 enforced disappearances, 90 cases of illegal detention, 36 cases of torture and/or other forms of inhuman and/or degrading treatment, widespread appropriation of public and private property and destruction of cultural property, and the forcible displacement of up to 60,000 civilians. It was submitted in conformity with the requirements of Article 15 of the Rome Statute.
At the press conference on 17 November, the documentation efforts and findings of IPHR and its partners will be presented by the following speakers:
- Brigitte Dufour, Director, IPHR
- Simon Papuashvili, Lawyer, Project Manager, IPHR
- Tamila Tasheva, Coordinator, CrimeaSOS
- Eugenia Zakrevska, victims’ legal representative
- Abdureshyt Dzhepparov, Coordinator of the Crimean Contact Group for Human Rights
Special guest: Mustafa Dzhemilev former Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, Commissioner of the Ukrainian President for the Affairs of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian MP
Time of press briefing: 17 November 2016, 11:00
Place: The building of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. Address: 8/5a, Reitarska Street, Kyiv.
For those of you who will be in Kyiv: We welcome you to join us!
For more information about the ICC submission, please contact: IPHR Project Manager Simon Papuashvili, simon.papuashvili@iphronline.org, +32 (0) 2 880 03 99 and for more information about the Kyiv press briefing: IPHR Ukraine Field Mission Assistant Yaropolk Brynykh, yaropolk.brynykh@IPHRonline.org, tel: +38 063 241 20 87.
Update 17 November 2016:
Check out videos below on the presentation of the ICC submission in The Hague on 16 November 2016 and livestream of press event in Kyiv on 17 November 2016!