The abduction and #deportation of up to 402,000 Ukrainians to #Russia, including some 15,000 people from the besieged city of #Mariupol, sends a chilling reminder of the region’s Soviet past.
While Russia claims that this constitutes an “evacuation”, #humanrights monitors report that deportees have been stripped of their passports and forced to sign papers saying they will remain in Russia in the districts they are moved to for two years to work without payment, rendering them as slaves.
According to #Ukraine’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Lyudmyla Denisova, some 84,000 children are among the abducted, who may be used as “hostages” to pressure #Kyiv to surrender in what has been labelled a “kidnapping” by the #US Embassy in Kyiv. This forms only the latest chapter of a long #history of forced population transfers by Russia, which, we argue, serves both economic and political ends. #lenin #stalin #gulag #economy #china #uighurs #labour
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