Deputy Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Tamila Tasheva took part in the forum “Electoral Reform: Assessment through the Prism of Values, Political Rights, Quality of Procedures”, organized by the Civil Network OPORA.
Tamila Tasheva: “Since 2015, it has been migrants from the Crimea who have started asking questions about voting in local elections. The Crimean people, who were forced to leave the territory of the peninsula, understood that the temporary occupation stretched over time, and they needed to integrate into the life of the community. After an extensive advocacy campaign, the opportunity to vote in local elections was provided. But the issue of participation in the instruments of local democracy has not been removed. Although according to a study by a number of NGOs, more than 40% of people used these tools. But IDPs raised the issue that they were not residents of the community. Therefore, this issue must be resolved in the near future, it is not a matter of changing the place of registration. On the issue of information security, it is necessary to get rid of Russian narratives, which are actively sown by Russia – in particular, the “fact” that Ukraine does not seem to care about IDPs, that it does not care about those who remained there. The strategy of de-occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol was recently adopted, it has not been published yet. But the cross-cutting line of this document is to reconnect with our citizens in the temporarily occupied territories and provide them with various services. We are not only returning territories, we are returning people. It is also worth working with people in the controlled areas regarding their perception. For example, the case of rejection and criticism of the decision to enter the university of children from the temporarily occupied territories or Russia’s initiatives to vaccinate them with the coronavirus vaccine. As Lubomyr Husar said: “Help the settlers and they will become apostles of peace”. This is important because the migrants communicate with their relatives and friends who live in the temporarily occupied territories. It is unfortunate that local authorities often do not consider IDPs to be residents of communities. But understanding is coming, political forces are attracting activists from Crimea, in particular, some have already become deputies”.