Since the beginning of the occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, human rights defenders have recorded 15 deaths, 39 forced abductions of people and other crimes on ethnical grounds, coordinator of the Crimea SOS public initiative Tamila Tasheva has said.

"Since 2014, speaking about dry figures, we have a minimum of 15 deaths that have been documented and that we know of. There have been 39 facts of forced abductions, more than 150 cases of torture and inhuman treatment of people, 96 cases of politically motivated persecution and more than 167 cases of administrative persecution, according to the administrative legislation [of the Russian Federation]," Tasheva said at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

She drew attention to the ethnic persecution of the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians in the occupied Crimea and to the persecution of Muslims on religious grounds.

"Now we see that [the prosecution] on ethnic grounds, which is supported... by allegations about extremism and terrorism, can fuel ethnic enmity and this is very dangerous," Tasheva said.

According to lawyer of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Anastasia Martynovska, in the occupied Crimea there is a tendency when people disliked by the occupation authorities at first are subjected to less severe repression and then to more and more serious – up to accusations of complicity in terrorism and extremism. She stressed that the application of the criminal legislation of the Russian Federation in the territory of Crimea is an international crime and a violation of the norms of international humanitarian law, which in the future will help bring Russia to justice.

"Such obvious gross violations by the Russian Federation should be assessed not only at the international level... but also at the national level," Martynovska said.

According to her, despite the fact that for four years Crimea has been occupied by Russia and during this time people were repeatedly brought to criminal responsibility for political reasons, many of them are in prisons and serve their sentences in the territory of the Russian Federation, Ukraine has not yet passed a law, which would regulate the policy of the state with regard to the assistance to political prisoners and their families.