The human rights organization CrimeaSOS has released a new report that outlines the extensive challenges rights lawyers face when attempting to work and defend their clients in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Titled “Advocacy in the occupied Crimea. Working conditions for human rights lawyers,” the report was presented at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center on Nov. 1.
Based on in-depth interviews with 18 lawyers and 14 human rights activists in Crimea, the research focuses on restrictions of lawyer’s activities and forms of pressure created by the occupation.It also provides illustrative case studies.
CrimeaSOS Director Iryna Datsenko was joined by Vladimir Zhbankov, a co-author of the report and an expert at the non-governmental organization Free Russia House in Kyiv, and Olga Tseitlin and Sergey Legostov, lawyers specializing in Crimean cases.
Since Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, experts say the Russian Federation has used legislation to indirectly influence the professional activities of human rights lawyers and to impede the protections lawyers offer their clients. It has also used unauthorized inspections, detentions and attempts to distance lawyers from clients through harassment by law enforcement agencies, psychological pressure and threats.
Not a single lawyer interviewed said he or she had encountered no pressure.
From March 2014 to June 2019, human rights defenders recorded at least 353 politically-motivated administrative cases in Crimea. Since June 2019, there have been at least 135 cases, of which 66% targeted Crimean Tatars.
There are twice as many politically-motivated administrative cases as criminal ones, according to the report.
There have been 45 reports of violent disappearances. Fifteen people have yet to be found (11 of them are Crimean Tatars), 7 were found dead (6 of them Crimean Tatar), 2 were convicted, 1 extradited, and 20 kidnapped and released.
There have been 20 deaths caused by the actions of Crimea’s Russian-appointed law enforcement officers and no less than 314 cases of torture and other forms of cruel punishment.
During the presentation, Olga Tseitlin explained the difficult process of advocacy in Russia and how the challenges will most likely transfer to the peninsula. Some of the lawyers interviewed gave examples of their dealings with the Russian Federation.
There have been cases where client’s locations are not revealed to their lawyers. Many clients are not allowed to call their lawyers and have difficulty communicating with them. When lawyers do finally have a chance to sit with their client, they are not given any privacy. It is extremely difficult for lawyers to give documents to their clients, and if they do, the document must go through the Russian Federal Security Service. Lawyer requests remain unanswered in 90% of cases.
The report ends with the team’s demands, stating:
“We demand the Russian Federation to immediately stop any form of persecution of advocates and civil defenders in the territory of Crimea and guarantee the inadmissibility of such persecution in the future, ensure the immediate access of lawyers to defendants and cease other obstacles for lawyers to exercise legal defense of persons detained / arrested / convicted in the territory of the occupied Crimea, respect, observe and not violate the rights of lawyers, comply with international legal regulations, including in the field of guarantees of the right to qualified legal defense.”
They recommend that the international community promptly respond to the facts and exercise the right to systematically exert public pressure on the Russian Federation and demand an end to the harassment, obstruction of justice and gross violation of human rights.
The European Parliament has condemned the policies imposed on Crimea by the Russian Federation and the Human Rights House foundation has taken a strong stance against the ongoing persecution of lawyers and human rights defenders.
