A Call for Global Attention from Kolkata as Ukraine is Under Siege

News Desk, News Nation 360 : On the occasion of International Human Rights Day, which is observed worldwide on the 10th, Soroptomist International of Calcutta and Tericom Foundation hosted a conversation led by Dr Tehnaz Dastoor on the topic of "Ukraine: Is the World Really Listening?" The topics featured Tehnaz's most recent journey to Ukraine, during which she visited Kyiv, the demolished city of Borodianka, Bucha, the village of Yazidne, the Holodomor Genocide Museum, and the Alla Horska exhibit, among other places. This conversation focused on how

Ukrainian cultural traditions helped to build national unity. In Russian-occupied Ukrainian lands, including Crimea and Donbas, a set of systematically experienced human rights abuses extends well beyond combat zone realities. Reports from the UN and human rights organisations point to massive enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrest, torture, and political suppression, especially of Crimean Tatars, labelled as “extremists” and regularly persecuted on terrorist charges that are purely fictional. “Russification” policies imposed in these territories involve "transplantation" of Russian administrative, judicial, and security systems, while “passportization” policies coerce Ukrainians into accepting Russian citizenship in exchange for threatened confiscation of property, public sector employment, social benefits, and access to vital services, effectively considering resisters of these policies “foreigners” in their own homes. Women and children also experience a tremendous impact, as evidenced in international investigations into illicit transportation and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, Illegal “adoptions” to Russian citizen parents, along with family separation, challenging personal, family, and structural dignity and security as guaranteed in human rights constitutions that cover Rights to Identity, Family Unity, and Prevention of Arbitrary Separation. “Conflict-related sexual violence”, including rape and other abuses in detention, has been systematically documented, in addition to women bearing all new economic, care, and support loads in war-torn zones with ascending cases of trauma, depression, and insecurity, in a conflict that has been in effect for so long.

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