The report prepared by Anti-Discrimination Centre “Memorial” and Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group
Anti-Discrimination Centre “Memorial” and Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group have been closely monitoring the violation of the rights of vulnerable ethnic minorities in the situation of armed conflict in the Eastern Ukraine (Donbass) that has affected the life of all the inhabitants of the region. In 2014-2016 field-missions were organized in order to collect evidence of Human Rights violations. The main focus of the research were the violations of Roma rights, therefore a big part of this report is dedicated to this particular problem – Roma rights violations in the conflict-affected area. However, this does not mean that our organizations have not come across facts of other minorities’ rights violations, for example, Meskhetian Turks were victims of the political unrest and discrimination by the self-proclaimed republics (so-called DNR and LNR), in result most of Mekhetian Turks left the country.
Declaring themselves “anti-fascist”, the leaders of these “republics” in fact were promoting xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Roma and anti-Ukrainian ideology.
In the annexed by Russia Crimea is also present strong anti-Ukrainian, anti-Western, disseminative to Crimean Tatar rhetoric and practice.
Only some aspects of these problems were included in this report, as only the well-proven facts based on the research carried out by our experts were collected.
Some general problems of the situation with the hate crime and hate speech illustrate the problem of the influence of the extreme-right discourses on the modern Ukrainian politics.