Crimean Tatars make up a totally disproportionate percentage of Russia’s Crimean political prisoners, with their lawyers also consistently subjected to persecution
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has found that Russia violated several articles of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination through its persecution of three Crimean Tatar lawyers. The ruling, on 26 June 2026, is important for a number of reasons, despite the miniscule chance that Russia will comply with it. The latter’s contempt for its own international commitments was only confirmed by the fact that the Committee’s ruling coincided with the Russian justice ministry’s further act of repression against one of the three lawyers, as well as his colleague and other Crimean Tatars linked with the Crimean Solidarity human rights movement.
The Committee combined three separate applications brought by three Crimean Tatar lawyers. Although their names were not given in the ruling, all three cases of persecution in 2021 and 2022 were earlier reported here. The first victim, identified in the report as Y, a prominent Crimean Tatar lawyer defending political prisoners and other victims of repression. He arrived on 25 October 2021 to provide legal assistance to some of over 20 Crimean Tatars who had been detained outside the occupation ‘Crimean garrison military court’ where they had gathered in solidarity with three political prisoners – Rustem Emiruseinov, Arsen Abkhairov and Eskender Abdulganiev– whose appeal was being heard.
Y was then detained and both fined and imprisoned for 12 days. Later, on 26 May 2022, Y was again detained, this time for supposedly ‘discrediting the Russian armed forces’. His colleague, Z was later that day detained when he arrived to represent Y. He was imprisoned for eight days. On 27 May, their colleague, X was detained when she came to represent Z who had been held for over 24 hours in custody (before the occupation ‘court’ ruling imprisoning him). She was imprisoned for five days.
The three lawyers’ complaints were submitted to the Committee by Serhiy Zayets and the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre [EHRAC]. In their complaints, they asserted that Russia was in violation of the Convention as they had been subjected to different treatment on the grounds of their ethnicity and their association with other Crimean Tatars (as lawyers representing other Crimean Tatars).
They complained that their prosecution was “part of an ongoing pattern of state harassment intended to repress and silence Crimean Tatar lawyers who defend other Crimean Tatars. The suppression by the State Party of Crimean Tatars as an ethnic minority, who has been opposed to the 2014 occupation, has been perpetrated in pursuit of the State Party’s policy to “Russify” Crimea and is inherently discriminatory.”
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