Military helicopters take away “a large number of men” from the Yakut people, the largest indigenous group in Siberia, mostly dedicated to forestry work.
Some ethnic minority groups in Russia face the risk of extinction due to forced recruitment of its members by the army in remote areas to fight the war against Ukraine, according to the UN rapporteur on human rights in Russia, Mariana Katzarova.
“The mass mobilization of indigenous people, particularly from nations with few members, is massive, as is the rate at which they die, which represents a threat of extinction for them,” declared the expert when presenting her latest report on the situation in Russia to the press.
He specified that most of this mobilization is forced and is focused on distant areas within the immense Russian territory.
Katzarova said she has been able to document cases of raids in small towns in which soldiers went house to house to take away men, “who don’t even know they have rights”.
This does not happen – he assured – in “more sophisticated places”like Moscow or Saint Petersburg, where “people know their rights better.”
The rapporteur mentioned a case of which she has learned in detail of military helicopters taking away “a large number of men” from the Yakut people (considered the largest indigenous group in Siberia), mostly dedicated to forestry work.
He said that it is an area so far away from Russia that it does not even have health services and where people die from medical emergencies because they cannot be evacuated to other places to receive care, “but the helicopters do get there” to take men. to the war against Ukraine.
In general terms, the rapporteur – assigned to this mandate by the UN Human Rights Council – described a more serious situation in Russia than a year ago, a country “led by a state-sponsored system of terror and punishment, which uses torture with absolute impunity”.
“Human rights defenders, journalists and political figures are persecuted and imprisoned in large numbers. Disagreeing with war is criminalized, while police violence is condoned.”he lamented.
170,000 prisoners released
Mariana Katzarova has also denounced at a press conference that the Russian Army has swelled its ranks with some 170,000 convicted prisoners who are now returning from the war in Ukraine and are once again committing crimes whose main victims are women, boys and girls, who suffer of sexual violence and murders
