MOSCOW, August 4. /TASS/. The Ukrainian authorities strip people displaced from the Kharkov Region of their refugee status and forcibly mobilize those of them who speak Russian in violation of international humanitarian law, the region’s human and children’s rights ombudsperson Viktoria Kolesnik-Lavinskaya said.
"We clearly see a chain of violations. First, refugees are deprived of their status, then they are placed in closed detention facilities under the guise of helping them. Administrations of such facilities directly collaborate with military recruitment offices. <…> Forcible mobilization of displaced persons constitutes a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, segregating them on ideological grounds can be interpreted as genocide," she said in a video address posted on the Kharkov Region’s military-civilian administration’s Telegram channel.
According to the ombudsperson, displaced families are often pressured to move to Ukraine’s western regions. "This is done under the guise of humanitarian programs. But we know cases when this was done under pressure, which calls into question the voluntary nature of such measures and looks more like forcible displacement," she added.
Meanwhile, deputy head of the Kharkov Region’s military-civilian administration, Yevgeny Lisnyak, said that the administration keeps record of such violations. "We regularly receive complaints from the relatives of these people. And based on these complaints, we can initiate criminal cases against more than a dozen of people involved in such crimes on charges of illegal deprivation of freedom, fraud, incitement of hatred, and genocide. Such charges carry a punishment of up to life in prison," he explained.
According to the administration, such violations are also reported from the Sumy region and the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).