In connection with the ongoing illegal persecution of participants and activists of the Tatar national movement by the judicial and law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation, we declare the following.
After the transition to a truly legal state system in the Republic of Tatarstan, persons who held positions in the judicial system and participated in making knowingly unjust decisions aimed at repression against members of the Tatar national movement and the opposition in general will be held accountable under the legislation of the new legal state and international norms.
Responsibilities will include:
– Verification of the legality of all decisions made by them;
— application of lustration measures that exclude the possibility of further holding positions in the judicial and law enforcement system;
— criminal and/or disciplinary prosecution in cases where personal guilt and the intentional nature of the actions are established.
We remind you that, according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 7), persecution on political grounds may be qualified as a crime against humanity. Acts that violate human rights are also subject to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary.
By serving the current collaborationist regime, which pursues a policy of destroying the Tatar people and all institutions of the sovereign republic, you are already writing your names in history as traitors and a disgrace to the nation. Your actions will have not only legal but also unforgettable moral consequences, and the memory of them will remain in historical chronicles as an example of betrayal of the interests of your own people.
You are not representatives of democracy and the rights of the people – on the contrary, you are the leaders of totalitarian practices, which, as history shows, inevitably lead to repression and the suppression of freedoms. Your activities continue the traditions of the punitive organs of the past, and in this, you are the direct ideological heirs of structures similar to the NKVD.
Officials involved in political repression and corruption must understand that illegally acquired assets will be identified and confiscated for the benefit of the state. Regardless of the change of jurisdiction or attempts to withdraw funds abroad, international legal mechanisms and financial controls will not allow them to escape responsibility.
The current regime will inevitably fall, and the Russian Federation will disintegrate, as will the USSR. At that moment, everyone will have to answer for their actions and decisions. What can you then present as an excuse? Everyone has a choice — and it is being made today.
We are convinced that the combination of current international pressure and future domestic accountability will be an important factor in preventing new cases of political repression and restoring the rule of law!
Government of Independent Tatarstan in Exile
Український погляд
