Isabel SantosCOPENHAGEN, 27 April 2016 – A decision Tuesday by the top court in Russian-occupied Crimea to ban the Crimean Tatars’ governing body indicates a new level of stigmatization of the Tatar community and should be reversed, said OSCE Parliamentary Assembly human rights chair Isabel Santos (MP, Portugal) today.

“Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the de facto authorities there have waged a systematic campaign of discrimination against the Tatars, using accusations of ‘extremism’ to justify this repression,” Santos said in a statement. “There is nothing extremist about an ethnic minority advocating for its civil, political and linguistic rights, which is precisely what the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars has done since 1991. The Mejlis is guided by principles of non-violence and its ban by an illegitimate court is yet another violation of fundamental freedoms on the Crimean peninsula.”

She added that she is deeply concerned that the de facto authorities have taken a step towards criminalizing the Crimean Tatars as an ethnic group and urged that the decision be reversed.

“I call for a reversal of this decision so that the Mejlis is able to continue its important work,” she said.

At the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s 2015 Winter Meeting, Mustafa Dzemiliev, a former Chairman of the Tatar Mejlis and member of the Ukrainian Parliament, reported that thousands of his people have fled to mainland Ukraine in response to attempts to restrict their political and linguistic autonomy by the de facto authorities since the Russian annexation in March 2014. He called for the OSCE and the broader international community to focus efforts on bringing the peninsula back under Ukrainian sovereignty.

The crisis in and around Ukraine, including the situation in Crimea, is also expected to feature prominently at the OSCE PA’s upcoming Annual Session in Tbilisi, Georgia.