Charles Tannock, on behalf of the ECR Group. – Mr President, Russia’s illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea continues, and so must the EU’s resolve to protest about its action. Sadly, the situation is not getting any better. There are now new allegations of human rights violations in Crimea detailed in the UN Human Rights Agency’s report. It is also the case that the Crimean minority group, the Tatars, continue to be persecuted, which echoes the treatment of their grandparents under Stalin. The imprisonment of prominent Tatar dissidents, Akhtem Chiygoz, Ilmi Umerov and the journalist Mykola Semena, as well as the fact that the Tatars’ Parliament, the Majlis, has been closed, is deeply alarming.

My group, the ECR, will continue to oppose Russia’s actions via EU sanctions and international pressure. The indigenous Turkic-speaking population must be allowed to live peacefully in their homeland of Crimea, and any efforts by the Russian Government to force them to leave the peninsula through policies of persecution or withdrawal of their democratic rights is totally unacceptable.