Historic Decision: ECHR Finds Russia Guilty of Systematic Human Rights Violations in Occupied Crimea

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has found Russia guilty of human rights violations in Crimea and delivered a judgment on the merits in the first interstate case Ukraine v. Russia (concerning Crimea), finding the aggressor state guilty of systematic human rights violations on the occupied Ukrainian peninsula. 

The judgment was published on the ECHR's official website.

Now the European Court will be able to proceed to the consideration of individual applications, said Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Iryna Mudra, according to the website of the head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine. 

In its judgment, the ECtHR stated that the Ukrainian government had provided comprehensive evidence of systematic violations of human rights and freedoms by representatives of the Russian Federation and persons under their control. In particular, these included illegal detentions and searches, ill-treatment, persecution of members of the religious community and Crimean Tatars, the suspension of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar media, and the ban on the Ukrainian language in schools.

The ECHR Commissioner Margarita Sokorenko stressed that today, 25 June 2024, the decision essentially "nullified Russia's decades-long claims that human rights in Crimea are respected".

She also noted that this decision is the first in which an international court has recognised the Russian Federation as responsible for a policy of large-scale and systematic violations of various human rights and freedoms in the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.

Margarita Sokorenko said that the ECHR unanimously found that the existence of administrative practices on the part of the Russian Federation had been proven:

disappearances and lack of effective investigation in this regard under Article 2 of the Convention;

ill-treatment and unlawful detention under Articles 3 and 5 of the Convention;

the unlawful spread of Russian legislation, as a result of which the courts in Crimea cannot be considered as established in accordance with the law, under Article 6;

forced change of Ukrainian citizenship to Russian citizenship under Article 8 of the Convention;

systematic mass searches in violation of Article 8;

forced transfer of convicted persons to the territory of the Russian Federation in violation of Article 8;

attacks and harassment of religious leaders who do not belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the seizure and confiscation of property in this regard, in violation of Article 9;

the closure of non-Russian media, including Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar TV stations, and the ongoing harassment and attacks on journalists in violation of Article 10;

prohibition of peaceful assemblies and protests and attacks and persecution of their organisers in violation of Article 11 of the Convention;

expropriation of private property in violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1;

the closure of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar classes in violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 1;

violation of the right to freedom of movement between the occupied territory of Crimea and mainland Ukraine;

discrimination against Crimean Tatars;

violation of the rights of political prisoners, the impossibility of their return to Ukraine and their ill-treatment in the occupied Crimea and the territory of the Russian Federation.

The ECHR was established in 1959 under Article 19 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms to ensure that contracting parties comply with their obligations under the Convention and its Protocols.