The human rights expert organization, Crimean Tatar Resource Center, was established in 2015 on the basis of the Committee for the Protection of Rights of the Crimean Tatar People, which began to work in occupied Crimea. In 2014, amid persecution of activists in Crimea, the organization began monitoring all cases of human rights violations.
After repression against human rights defenders, some activists had to leave Crimea and establish their work in mainland Ukraine, according to Eskender Bariev, the head of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, a member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people.
"Today, our organization has three areas of work: human rights, normative and the one related to the promotion of Crimea's de-occupation," he said.
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The achievements include the drafting of a long-term strategy of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, as well as participation in the drafting of the strategy for public diplomacy of the Crimean Tatar people and the implementation of this strategy through participation in international forums within the UN, OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Together with partners, the Information Policy Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and with the support of international funds, the Academy of Public Diplomacy of the Crimean Tatar People has been established. Thus, he believes, the world is constantly talking about Crimea.
According to Bariev, the organization has a network of activists in occupied Crimea who send information about events taking place in Crimea.
"We are expanding our network of activists, maintaining contact and holding seminars for them, including psychological rehabilitation and security, since the topic of protecting activists in Crimea is very relevant. We have a proven methodology - what to do in case of danger. We also try to ensure that the relatives of victims of repression, lawyers and the victims themselves go to international platforms in order to inform the world about Crimea," Bariev said.
Lawyers are also working with victims of repression, complaints and applications are submitted to the European Court of Human Rights and the UN. This is done by two lawyers of the organization.
"By the way, one of our offices is located in Henichesk, Kherson region, where we advise Crimean residents from the occupied territories on obtaining Ukrainian documents - passports, birth certificates, etc. If the matter requires judicial intervention, we try to solve it promptly. For this purpose we even organized a seminar for judges in Kherson region," the Mejlis member said.
In addition, throughout the year the Crimean Tatar Resource Center ensured the appearance of witnesses on a lawsuit investigated by the prosecutor's office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea about the deportation of 1944 as genocide against the Crimean Tatar people. A total of 110 court hearings have already been held.
In addition to lawyers, the organization has a fundraiser to collect money for ongoing initiatives and projects.
As for the strategy for Crimea's return to Ukraine, Bariev said unequivocally - Crimea should be returned as a territory.
"First of all, we must fight for the territory of Crimea and then work with people if they did not commit criminal offences," the human rights activist said. ...
A Princeton PhD, was a U.S. diplomat for over 20 years, mostly in Central/Eastern Europe, and was promoted to the Senior Foreign Service in 1997. After leaving the State Department in 2003 to express strong reservations about the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq, he shared ideas with Georgetown University students on the tension between propaganda and public diplomacy. He has given talks on "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United" to participants in the "Open World" program. Among Brown’s many articles is his latest piece, “Janus-Faced Public Diplomacy: Creel and Lippmann During the Great War,” now online. He is the compiler (with S. Grant) of The Russian Empire and the USSR: A Guide to Manuscripts and Archival Materials in the United States (also online). In the past century, he served as an editor/translator of a joint U.S.-Soviet publication of archival materials, The United States and Russia: The Beginning of Relations,1765-1815. His approach to "scholarly" aspirations is poetically summarized by Goethe: "Gray, my friend, is every theory, but green is the tree of life."
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