Thu 08 September 2022:
The US has accused Moscow of perpetrating a war crime by forcibly deporting Ukrainians to Russia, and it claims to have information that Russian officials are in charge of so-called filtration operations.
“These operations aim to identify individuals Russia deems insufficiently compliant or compatible to its control,” US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
She said estimates from a variety of sources, including Moscow, indicate that authorities have “interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported” between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians to Russia following the Russian invasion in late February..
“The forcible transfer or deportation of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupier … constitutes a war crime,” she said. “So why are they doing this? … to prepare for an attempted annexation.”
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia described the council meeting as a waste of time and “a new milestone in the disinformation campaign unleashed by Ukraine and its Western backers.”
‘Credible’ reports
On Wednesday, the United Nations said there are credible accusations that Russian forces have sent Ukrainian children to Russia for adoption as part of a larger-scale forced relocation and deportation programme.
Ilze Brands Kehris, assistant UN secretary-general for human rights, told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday that Russian forces are also running “filtration” operations in which Ukrainians in occupied territories face systematic security checks that have involved “numerous” human rights violations.
“There have been credible allegations of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian occupied territory, or to the Russian Federation itself,” Kehris said.
“We are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children without parental care, and that these children would be eligible for adoption by Russian families,” she said.
The filtration procedures of Ukrainian adults judged as close to the Ukraine government or military have involved torture and the forcible removal and transfer to Russian penal colonies and other detention centres, Kehris said.
“In cases that our office has documented, during ‘filtration,’ Russian armed forces and affiliated armed groups have subjected persons to body searches, sometimes involving forced nudity, and detailed interrogations about the personal background, family ties, political views and allegiances of the individual concerned,” she said.
Today, at the request of 🇺🇸&🇦🇱, #UNSC will hold an open mtg.on the Forced Displacements of🇺🇦Civilians & the Use of Filtration Operations
To brief the council: DPPA Under SG @DicarloRosemary, OHCHR ASG Ilze Brands Kehris ,CSO repr. Oleksandra Drik
📺⬇️https://t.co/mhyrIpLAtk pic.twitter.com/bZe9D5E10d
— Albania in UN (@AlMissionUN) September 7, 2022
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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