Nobel Prize winner and Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk calls on the international community to set up a special tribunal to prosecute the Russian president Vladimir PutinShe called him “the world's biggest child kidnapper.”
“The illegal repatriation of Ukrainian children to Russia is part of a genocidal policy,” Matvechuk said in an interview. West DistrictMercedes Stephenson.
Matvechuk, whose Centre for Civil Liberties co-recipient of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, visited Canada this week to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who described her on Twitter as “a proud Ukrainian who has dedicated her life to defending civil liberties at home and abroad.”
During her trip to Ottawa, she sat down with Stephenson to discuss her work, now in its third year, documenting more than 72,000 human rights violations during the war.
Matvechuk said some of the most egregious crimes were committed against children, whom she condemned as a “widespread” and “deliberate” effort to erase their Ukrainian identity.
“They were placed in resettlement camps in Russia, where they had to sing the Russian national anthem and learn Russian,” Matvechuk said. “And then they were prepared for forced adoption by Russian families.”
Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russia's children's rights commissioner, accusing them of “illegally deporting” Ukrainian children to Russia. Moscow has said it does not recognize the warrants.
While exact figures are hard to come by, Ukrainian authorities estimate that as many as 20,000 children have been taken away – a charge Russia denies.
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“There is an accountability gap,” Matvechuk said. “We must have a specialized court for the crime of aggression.”
Unless both the victim state and the “aggressor state” ratify and accept the ICC’s jurisdiction, the court cannot prosecute the crime of aggression.
Matvechuk warned that it would be difficult to bring the Russian president to justice without a special tribunal.
“We have no power to prosecute him because he has immunity under international law,” she said.
Matvechuk said she has been in touch with human rights advocates in Russia who have shared heartbreaking stories of child abductions in Ukraine.
She recounted a case where a little boy was separated from his teenage sister, adopted by a Russian family and given a new name.
“He was crying and saying, 'That's not my name, I have another name, where is my sister?'” Matvichuk said.
“This policy destroys their identity.”
—AP file
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