07/31/2026
WFUWO Strongly Condemns Russia’s Continued and Most Recent Persecution of Crimean Tatars
https://mailchi.mp/c06bfd3f92c9/wfuwo-strongly-condemns-russias-continued-and-most-recent-persecution-of-crimean-tatars
(NEW YORK – July 30, 2026) -- On June 26, 2026, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued views, legally binding positions under international law, concluding that russia violated multiple provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination through its targeted persecution of three Crimean Tatar human rights attorneys – who, for purposes of security, were anonymously named as “X”, “Y”, and “Z”.
Exactly one month later, on July 26, 2026, the russian federation’s ministry of justice published a list of names of 137 Crimean Tatar individuals from the human rights organization Crimean Solidarity designating them “foreign agents.” This list of individuals includes human rights defenders, civic activists, current political prisoners, family of political prisoners and virtually all attorneys representing political prisoners.
In russia, the “foreign agent” designation is used as a tool of social repression to silence opinions that contradict the official line from moscow. The designation authorizes and formalizes government harassment. Those designated as foreign agents become targets of arbitrary arrest, refusal of employment, public stigmatization - especially of children, unannounced and extensive financial audits, detention without substantiation. All forms of government and public harassment are authorized without cause, a strategy that is financially, morally, legally debilitating to the individual and organization given this designation.
The World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations condemns in the strongest of terms this recent action by the russian federation to again break the will of the Crimean Tatars people.
Established in Crimea in April 2016 as a civic group, Crimean Solidary was an informal movement and peaceful human rights organization to protect victims of repression on ethnic, religious and political grounds in russian-occupied Crimea.
Since it’s illegal occupation of Crimea in 2014, the russian federation has regularly added the names of individual Crimean Tatar activists, journalists, and human rights defenders to its official state "List of Terrorists and Extremists," a list publicly maintained by russia’s federal intelligence information agency Rosfinmonitoring.
For ten years, Crimean Solidarity has provided factual information to the world about conditions and events in russia-occupied Crimea. However, since the designation of “foreign agent” is a criminal designation in russia, in order to protect its members and the movement, Crimean Solidarity sees no alternative but to terminate its activities and all activities were terminated on July 26, 2026.
Crimean Solidarity categorically states that all claims made by the russian ministry of justice to justify labelling this vital human rights organization as are false.
This most recent criminalization of Crimean Tatars is a harsh reminder of May 18, 1944, when Stalin ordered the deportation of all Crimean Tatars from Crimea. All were given a mere 15 minutes under gunpoint to gather their belongings before being loaded into cattle cars. Close to half of the Crimean Tatars died en route to or in places of exile in Central Asia.
With Ukraine’s independence in 1991, Crimea was recognized internationally as being within Ukraine’s borders. At the invitation of the Government of Ukraine, 300,000 Crimean Tatars returned to their homeland.
In 2014, russia illegally occupied the peninsula and Crimean Tatars again were forced to flee, forced to leave their homeland twice within the span of seventy years.
At present, approximately 200,000 Crimean Tatars continue to reside in the russian-occupied peninsula.
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Note: In keeping with the standard maintained by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, WFUWO writes russia and all related terms in lowercase, as a sign of well- deserved disrespect.