US State Department announces preservation of sanctions against Russia over the Crimea
The U.S. considers the Russian government guilty of violations of the rights of the inhabitants of the Crimea. Such a statement was made Thursday by official State Department spokesman Mark Toner. He also stressed that Washington still does not recognize the results of the referendum in the Crimea on March 16, 2014, as well as Russia’s “attempted annexation of Crimea and continued violation of international law."
“Russia…staged an illegitimate referendum in which residents of the Crimea were compelled to vote while heavily armed foreign forces occupied their land,” the statement said on the three-year anniversary of the Crimea's accession to Russia.
According to the State Department, over the past three years "Russian occupation ‘authorities’ in the Crimea have engaged in a campaign to suppress dissent. In Russian-occupied Crimea, human rights monitors have documented enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture and punitive psychiatric hospitalizations."
Victims of persecution are "Crimean Tatars, ethnic Ukrainians, pro-Ukrainian activists, and independent journalists," Toner specified. He urged Russia "cease its attempts to suppress freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and religion."
In addition, the representative of the State Department recalled that the U.S. sanctions related to the Crimea "will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine."