The human rights situation in Russia has worsened substantially since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the UN warned on Monday, condemning the “persistent use of torture”, including sexual violence.
“The human rights situation in the Russian Federation has deteriorated significantly since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,” said Mariana Katzarova, author of the United Nations report.
The dramatic degradation came after “the situation had already been steadily deteriorating over the past two decades, partly as a legacy of two wars in Chechnya that ended in 2009.”
Katzarova, who in April became the first observer of the human rights situation in Russia named by the UN Human Rights Council, believes how Russian authorities “severely restrict the freedoms of association, peaceful and express assembly, both online and out of line”. She also regretted that a series of administrative sanctions have been applied “arbitrarily against dissidents and that force has been used against peaceful protesters.”
“Both the harshness of recent criminal sentences and the number of people convicted on politically motivated charges have increased,” the report states.
The person responsible for this UN report claimed to have documented how recent legislative restrictions were used to “muzzle civil society.”
“The often violent enforcement of these laws and regulations has resulted in a systematic repression of civil society organizations that has closed civic space and independent media. It has led to mass arbitrary arrests, imprisonments and harassment of human rights defenders, peaceful anti-war activists, journalists, cultural figures, minorities and anyone who speaks out against the Russian Federation’s war against Ukraine,” he warned.
The expert, who is expected to present the report to the Human Rights Council later this week, also highlighted that women, particularly those working as rights defenders, activists or journalists, “have suffered specific violence, humiliation and intimidation of genre”. . And she added that “the atmosphere of impunity and the unpredictability of changes in the law, in addition to its ambiguity,” forced many Russians into exile.
Source: TSF
