Desperate families are trying to secure the release of more than 20,000 Ukrainians held captive by Russia. Rights activists have said the Geneva Conventions are being violated.
According to Dmytro Lubinets, the human rights commissioner in the Ukrainian parliament, Russia is holding more than 20,000 Ukrainian civilians, including those in Crimea, the self-proclaimed "Peoples Republics" of Luhansk and Donetsk and occupied parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Emil Kurbedinov, a renowned lawyer and defender of Crimean Tatar activists, said that some of these Ukrainians had been charged with espionage or terrorism under Russian law but many were being held without any justification.
In April, a report by Human Rights Watch stressed that the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War permitted "the internment or assigned residence of civilians only for 'imperative reasons of security'" and that protections "include the right to contest the basis for detention, access to counsel and family members, and humane treatment at all times."
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