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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Ukrainians In Occupied Territories Are Being Forced To Get Russian Passports

Reports have emerged of children, retirees, and workers being forced by the Russian military and occupying administration to obtain Russian Federation passports, or face prison, beating or loss of public benefits.

Image of a hand holding a red Russian passport.

Russian passport

Iryna Gamaliy

It's referred to as: "forced passportization." Reports are accumulating of police and local authorities in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine requiring that locals obtain Russian passports. Now new evidence has emerged that Ukrainians are indeed being coerced into changing their citizenship, or risk retribution from occupying authorities.

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Ever since late September, when President Vladimir Putin announced Russia hadd unilaterally annexed four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson), Moscow has been seeking ways to legitimize the unrecognized annexation. The spreading of Russian passports is seen as an attempt to demonstrate that there is support among the Ukrainian population to be part of Russia.


Ukrainian military sources report Monday that locals in Kherson are threatened with imprisonment, beatings, or denial of social benefits or wages if they don't have a Russian passport at the checkpoints set up by the Russian military.

Children and elderly targeted

Meanwhile, in the occupied part of the Luhansk region, Russians are creating conditions for expediting the issuance of Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens, including minor children.

An application for termination of citizenship for a child under the age of 14 can be submitted.

"According to the recently adopted law, an application for termination of citizenship for a child under the age of 14 can be submitted by one of the parents, the sole parent, or the adoptive parent," the Luhansk Regional Military Administration reports.

For children left without parental care, mainly those permanently in an educational or medical organization providing social services, the application is submitted by a guardian or an authorized representative of such an institution without regard to the child's opinion.

In addition, elderly are forced to obtain Russian passports in order to collect their pension benefits.

"Since March, pensions have been recalculated in the territory," the pro-Russian administration announced. "A person can apply to the relevant authorities only with a Russian passport registered in the region. Passports of Ukraine ... are not accepted. If you do not have time to get a new piece of paper, you cannot wait for the recalculation."

Also, in the occupied city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region, the occupation forced have banned social services payments to residents who refuse to obtain a Russian passport.

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Society

Big Brother For The People: India's CCTV Strategy For Cracking Down On Police Abuse

"There is nothing fashionable about installing so many cameras in and outside one’s house," says a lawyer from a Muslim community. And yet, doing this has helped members of the community prove unfair police action against them.

A woman is walking in the distance while a person holds a military-style gun close up

Survellance and tight security at the Lal Chowk area in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India on October 4, 2022

Sukanya Shantha

MUMBAI — When sleuths of the National Investigating Agency suddenly descended on human rights defender and school teacher Abdul Wahid Shaikh’s house on October 11, he knew exactly what he needed to do next.

He had been monitoring the three CCTVs that are installed on the front and the rear of his house — a chawl in Vikhroli, a densely populated area in suburban Mumbai. The cameras told him that a group of men and women — some dressed in Mumbai police’s uniform and a few in civil clothes — had converged outside his house. Some of them were armed and few others with batons were aggressively banging at the door asking him to immediately let them in.

This was not the first time that the police had landed at his place at 5 am.

When the policemen discovered the CCTV cameras outside his house, they began hitting it with their batons, destroying one of them mounted right over the door. This action was captured by the adjacent CCTV camera. Shaikh, holed up in his house with his wife and two children, kept pleading with the police to stop destroying his property and simply show them an official notice.

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