Feedback Protection of the rights of groups that are called “vulnerable to discrimination” in the language of modern international law is reminded about on certain dates, many of them in spring. Discrimination against women is discussed rather in March, the topic of discrimination against Roma is raised in April, while in May even two dates are very relevant – the Day against homophobia/transphobia and the Day of remembrance of the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people, who are discriminated against and persecuted by the Russian authorities in the 21st century.
The spring trimester ends with the Day of protection of children, who are often discriminated either as members of minorities, or in gender dimension, or simply as such – children always and everywhere have less rights than adults. Children’s rights as a concept have existed for a long time, but not always and not everyone perceived them as an essential part of human rights guarantees. The situation has begun to change recently, when the rights of children from Ukraine are taking up more and more attention in the work of professional lawyers and human rights defenders. It is important to put this issue in the context of discriminatory attitudes towards children, whom the Russian authorities perceive as a tool for suppressing a group, often an entire nation. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has repeatedly noted the terrible practice of abducting Ukrainian children, indoctrinating them with militaristic and chauvinistic ideas through propaganda and extremely ideologized schooling, and using these children in war, after growing up under occupation or forced assimilation.
Often the situation is seen as an analogy with the actions of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages, when the children of conquered Christian peoples were forced to become janissaries – Turkish infantrymen. But it seems more appropriate to recall another episode of the past, not so long ago and much more familiar, meaning the recruitment of children into the army of the Russian Empire. While normally recruits were adults, the minors were forcibly taken from those groups of the population who were suppressed and discriminated. The issue of Jewish cantonists is quite well known and studied; much less do we know about Indigenous peoples, Roma and children of participants in uprisings in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Such children were recruited into the army from the age of 7, and died en masse, unable to withstand the extremely difficult conditions, stress, hunger and disease. Alexander Herzen wrote in “My Past and Thoughts” that he had never seen anything more terrible than the march of the unfortunate child soldiers: “Pale, exhausted, with a frightened look, they stood in awkward, thick soldier’s overcoats with hard collars, turning some kind of helpless, pitiful gaze at the garrison soldiers who roughly lined them up; white lips blue circles under their eyes — showed fever or chills. And these sick children, without care, without kindness, blown by the wind that blows freely from the Arctic Sea, went to the grave.”
The Russian authorities have now begun to persecute minorities again, as they are again taking children away from those who resist their imperial aggression.
There is a process of consistent and ever-increasing repression against Indigenous peoples; organizations defending the cultural, economic, political, and linguistic rights of national minorities are recognized as extremist, terrorist, and undesirable.
The first step was taken back in 2016, when the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people was recognized as “extremist”. Human rights defenders protested at that time, calling it “a stage of the attack on the rights of the Crimean Tatars, and ethnic, cultural and political (based on political convictions) discrimination of the Crimean Tatar people.”
Eight years later, 55 organizations representing different peoples under the rule of the Russian Federation had been recognized as “extremist” at once: the activists were accused of “destroying the multinational unity and territorial integrity of Russia.” In a few months, they appeared to be “terrorist” organisations. Among the repressed groups there are representatives of small Indigenous peoples protected by special Russian and international law. Their human rights work had been completely arbitrarily labelled and criminalized.
Small indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation have recently initiated an important step towards recognizing the centuries-old violation of their rights by the colonialists. With the support of a number of democratic politicians, human rights defenders and journalists, they adopted a document declaring recognition of the mistakes and crimes of the past, reconciliation and respect, under the necessary condition of respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples in the future. Among other things, the authors of the Declaration noted “a coercive and mandatory system of boarding schools, which led to the destruction of family and cultural ties, forced assimilation, erosion of Indigenous identity, and the loss of native languages and traditions (commonly referred to as the issue of the “Stolen Generations”). This peace initiative found quick repressive response from the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation: the coordinator of the Declaration, the Batani Foundation, was declared an “undesirable organization”, for the demand of “recognition of historical justice and ensuring the rights of the Indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East,” were by.
Stefania KULAEVA
First published on the blog of Radio Svoboda (in Russian)