{"id":2678,"date":"2017-03-30T12:01:43","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T11:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rcstaging.co.uk\/ehrac\/?post_type=case-studies&p=2678"},"modified":"2021-03-26T12:03:23","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T12:03:23","slug":"mejlis-of-crimean-tatar-people-and-others-v-russia","status":"publish","type":"case-studies","link":"http:\/\/ehrac.org.uk\/en_gb\/key-ehrac-cases\/mejlis-of-crimean-tatar-people-and-others-v-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Mejlis of Crimean Tatar People and others v Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t
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Today the Mejlis (representative body of Crimean Tatars) has submitted an application to the European Court of Human Rights concerning its designation as an \u2018extremist\u2019 organisation and subsequent banning by the Russian authorities<\/a>. The Crimean peninsula has been under Russian rule since its annexation from Ukraine in March 2014.<\/p>\n

The Mejlis and its leaders are represented before the European Court by the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre<\/a> (EHRAC, based at Middlesex University<\/a> in London), the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union<\/a> (Kyiv) and Memorial Human Rights Centre<\/a> (Moscow). This is the first case EHRAC is litigating jointly with both Ukrainian and Russian partners, an important moment for our international collaboration on human rights litigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Context<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people of the Crimean peninsula, and the Mejlis was set up to represent their interests to the Ukrainian Government in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1944 more than 180,000 Crimean Tatars (most of the indigenous population at the time) were deported to Central Asia under the Stalinist regime; one of the aims of the Mejlis is to address the consequences of the 1944 deportation, along with protecting and exercising the rights of Crimean Tatars as an indigenous people. Since Russian annexation in 2014, the Mejlis has consistently refuted that Crimea is part of Russia, and Moscow\u2019s resultant approach is certainly cause for concern<\/a>.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In February 2016, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Crimea declared the Mejlis an \u2018extremist\u2019 organisation; the appeal was dismissed on 29 September 2016. On 12 April 2016, the Crimean Prosecutor suspended the Mejlis\u2019 activities<\/a>. Subsequently several Mejlis members have been threatened, harassed or are facing prosecution<\/a> by the Russian authorities, of whom ten have been charged<\/a> with administrative or criminal offenses for \u2018illegal\u2019 gatherings, and one is in prison. Mustafa Dzhemilev, former Chair of the Mejlis and a leading defender of Crimean Tatar rights, and Refat Chubarov, the current Head of the Mejlis, are forbidden from entering the peninsula<\/a>, and several Crimean Tatar media outlets have either been banned or persecuted<\/a>. Many Crimean Tatars have been forced to leave for mainland Ukraine or Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n\u201cModern Russia, which has annexed Crimea, does not dare openly repeat Stalin\u2019s \u2018experiment\u2019, in which the Crimean Tatar people were subject to deportation in their entirety from Crimea. However, the agenda set by today\u2019s Moscow \u2013 \u2018Crimea without Crimean Tatars\u2019 \u2013 is being implemented by Crimea\u2019s occupying authorities.<\/p>\n

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According to the Russian occupiers\u2019 vision, fear and despair ought to push Crimean Tatars to \u2018voluntarily\u2019 leave Crimea. With this aim, the authorities are carrying out violent kidnappings and murders, repressing and persecuting civil society activists, prosecuting Muslims, declaring representative bodies of the indigenous people of Crimea \u2013 the Kurultai and the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people \u2013 extremist, and banning them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At a time when many international institutions are completely powerless when it comes to Russia\u2019s open trampling of the principles and norms of international law, it falls to the European Court of Human Rights to find legal avenues ensuring effective protection of collective and individual rights of the Crimean Tatars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Refat Chubarov, Head of the Mejlis<\/cite>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Mejlis argues before the European Court that its designation as an extremist organisation and the suspension of its activities is a violation of the right to freedom of association, under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); and that it has been banned \u2013 and its members persecuted \u2013 to punish them for their political position (in violation of Article 18). They also complain that the Russian Courts disregarded their status as a representative body of the indigenous people of Crimea, violating the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14). They further allege that they did not have access to a fair trial (Article 6 ECHR), and they could not have anticipated that their activities would be in violation of anti-extremist legislation (Article 7 ECHR). Approximately 3,000 individual cases related to the events in Crimea or the hostilities in Eastern Ukraine<\/a> are currently pending before the Court.<\/p>\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\n\t\t\t<\/div> \n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div> \n<\/div><\/div>\n\t\t

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