This Thursday, September 1, the human rights NGO Human Rights Watch publishes a report on the forced transfers of Ukrainian civilians, fleeing the war, to Russian territory. A practice that seems very widespread, knowing that 2.8 million Ukrainians have arrived on Russian soil since the start of the war, as the Russian news agency TASS claimed at the end of July.
With our correspondent in Tbilisi, Regis Gente
The report published on 1 September by Human Rights Watch comes to support what many witnesses, relayed by journalists or NGOs, have been telling for a few months. The forced transfer of Ukrainian civilians to Russia as they fled combat zones.
These transfers are a serious violation of the laws of war and constitute war crimes and possible crimes against humanity “, underlines the report.
It is not necessarily a question of manu militari constraint, but of the creation of conditions which mean that these civilians no longer have the choice of the destination to which they want to flee. Lack of evacuation corridors, psychological pressure, etc.
“Filtration Camps”
The phenomenon seems massive, according to Tanya Lokshina, one of the authors of the report: It is very difficult to establish how many Ukrainians were forcibly transferred to the Russian Federation. Of the 18 people we interviewed who transferred to Russia, 5 told us they did so voluntarily because that was how he wanted to join the European Union. “.
During these forced transfers, Ukrainian civilians had to pass through “filtration camps”, notably those in the Mariupol and Kharkiv regions. There, it was a question of making sure that they had not fought within the Ukrainian armed forces.
A “punitive and abusive” procedure, say the authors of the report.