Cabinet of Ministers changes procedure for entry to Crimea

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine amended the procedure for entry to and exit from Crimea.

This is stated in the decree, published on the government website.

The changes allow foreign journalists, human rights activists and members of international NGOs travelling to the peninsula. To carry out journalistic activities, the representatives of foreign media should get a special permit of the Information Policy Ministry of Ukraine, while human rights activists and representatives of international non-governmental organizations should be issued such permit at the Foreign Ministry.

The list of grounds on which foreign nationals can obtain a permit to enter Crimea also include preaching religious beliefs, performing religious rituals (with the approval of the Culture Ministry) and participating in the activities of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people.

“We have been seeking for these changes for a few months and we welcome their approval. Since June 4, when the procedure for entry to and exit from Crimea was established, Ukraine virtually blocked access for the human rights activists from other countries, the Russian lawyers who protected Ukrainian citizens in the Crimean courts and foreign journalists – in fact for all those who could tell the world about what was happening in Crimea and to help people to defend their rights, ” Tetiana Pechonchyk, head of the Human Rights Information Center, commented on new rules.

However, the human rights activists claim that the new procedure does not take into account all the proposed changes, and hence the problem with the entrance to Crimea is still on the agenda.

“There are a series of challenges which still remains. The foreign citizens are not able to draw up a permit or even to apply for entry to Crimea being outside of Ukraine. To obtain a permit, they must travel to Ukraine to apply and wait as the deadlines for issuing permits are quite extensive,” Darya Svyrydova, lawyer of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, says.

As the lawyer notes, another negative factor is that the procedure still regulates the movement of citizens of Ukraine in Crimea, although it should apply only to foreigners, “The Cabinet hasn’t had the powers to restrict freedom of movement of citizens of Ukraine. The law of Ukraine ensuring the rights and freedoms of citizens and legal regime in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine stipulates that the procedure for entry to and exit from the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea shall be adopted only for foreigners and stateless persons.”

As a reminder, the new procedure for entry to and exit from Crimea was adopted on June 4 and entered into force on June 10. The human rights organizations criticized the procedure and demanded to amend it.

Because of the new rules, the Crimean Field Mission on Human Rights (CFM), the only international monitoring mission which was constantly working in Crimea from March 2014 to July this year, stopped going to Crimea to conduct field work in documenting human rights violations. In addition, on June 13, the crew of one of the Azerbaijani TV channels was not let enter the peninsula because of the new rules.