The occupiers once again blatantly ignore the norms of international law and violate the rights of our citizens – they illegally transferred Vilen Temeryanov, Enver Krosh, Rinat Aliyev and Edem Bekirov from the occupied Crimea to the Rostov prison.

According to available information, the occupiers may deport illegally imprisoned Nariman Dzhelal, Asan and Aziz Akhtemov to Russia. In this regard, 13 human rights organizations issued a joint statement condemning numerous crimes of the occupation administrations. In the statement, human rights defenders called on international and intergovernmental organizations, as well as Ukraine’s partner states, to impose personal sanctions on those involved in the politically motivated persecution and imprisonment of Ukrainian citizens, to continue and strengthen political and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation to stop the criminal practices of the occupation administrations, and to promote the establishment and strengthening of mechanisms for negotiations to prevent the illegal deportation and release of all political prisoners.

Such actions of the occupiers as “transfers” violate the norms of international humanitarian law, namely Article 49 of the IV Geneva Convention, which prohibits the Occupying Power from forcibly transferring civilians from the occupied territory to its own. At the same time, Article 76 of the Convention stipulates that even if persons are accused of committing a crime, they must be in the occupied territory, and “if convicted, must serve their sentence there.”

Currently, less than a third of the 182 political prisoners are on the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea – all the others have been deported to Russia by the occupiers, where they are held in terrible conditions and often deliberately denied the necessary medical care. In such conditions, two Ukrainian citizens, Konstantin Shiring and Dzhemil Gafarov, have already died due to a sharp deterioration in their health. There are still many political prisoners who have serious health problems, and their lives are in real danger.