GENEVA: The UN human rights office said in a report on Monday that Russia is violating international law in Crimea, including by imposing Russian citizenship on its people and deliberately transferring hundreds of prisoners and detainees to prisons in Russia.

The report, drawn up under an existing request from Ukraine’s government, chronicles alleged rights violations and abuses in Crimea since Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Russia has refused to budge despite international outrage and biting US and European Union sanctions against Moscow.

A Russian diplomat in Geneva insisted that the UN rights mission didn’t have competency to examine the situation in Crimea, insisting that the peninsula was part of Russia now.

“It is strange that the hu­­man rights mission in Ukraine assesses the situation in the Russian Federa­tion,” the diplomat said. “This is un-mandated work.” The report urges Russia to “effectively investigate” alleged torture, abductions and killings in the peninsula, while decrying denials of access to its own team and urges the international community to support push for that access.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2017