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Permanent Mission of Lithuania to the United Nations Statement by H.E. Ms. Raimonda Murmokaitė Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Lithuania to the United Nations March 19, 2014 Madame President, Last Sunday, a hastily crafted illegal and illegitimate referendum took place in Ukraine’s Crimea. A referendum held in a region cut off from its mainland and the rest of the world by another country’s armed forces and under the heavy barrage of aggressive anti-Ukrainian propaganda. 

Representatives of the OSCE, the CoE, the UN- key international and regional organizations with an outstanding experience human rights monitoring and election organization and observation were all prevented from entering Crimea. The plebiscite was organized in a record short period of time, probably a first in the practice of referenda, without nationwide preparations or consultations. Not a single credible international observer was present to verify and ascertain that this hurried referendum was free and fair.  These facts alone are sufficient to ring alarms about the referendum being fair or fraudulent.

Notably while representatives of major international organizations, monitors and observers were prevented from entering Crimea, over a hundred of so called independent referendum  observers, well established hardline nationalists, nazi sympathizers, deniers of the Holocaust, deniers of the massacre of Srebrenica, anti-Semites and islamophobes- hardly a company to keep for those who claim to protect Europe, Ukraine and Crimea from fascism-  were testifying that the referendum was free and perfect.  

The indigenous Tatar population, for whom Crimea is the only place on earth they can call home and whose massive deportation by Stalin in cattle cars is still very much alive in the collective memory of that people, called to boycott the election as contrary to their desire to be a part of Ukraine’s future. How about their right to self-determination? 

This so-called referendum is nothing but an undisguised land grab and a blatant violation by Russia of the Charter of the United Nations, international law, as well as its bilateral and multilateral agreements and commitments.   

A country which should have been a guarantor of Ukraine’s sovereignty as per the 1994 Budapest memorandum, shamelessly breached its legal responsibility towards Ukraine to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange of renunciation of  nuclear weapons. What impact on the nonproliferation regime is that going to have?  

Sunday’s referendum is nothing else but a fraudulent sham whose sole purpose was to rubber-stamp the illegal annexation of a part of Ukraine. As such, it cannot be recognized by the international community. Lithuania once again calls on all states to reject this act, not to recognize the illegal joining of a part of the territory of sovereign Ukraine to the Russian Federation, and to reaffirm their support for the principles of the UN Charter and for the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine. 

How deeply ironic is the fact that carried out under the false pretext of protecting human and minority rights  by pro-Russian militants with Moscow’s support,  this aggression against Crimea caused serious and repeated human rights violations  of the Crimean population, through incitement against Ukrainians, extreme censorship, shutting down media outlets and press hubs, cases of arbitrary arrest,  detention and enforced disappearances, routine attacks against journalists, vandalism, beatings and other ill-treatment. 

Furthermore, the outcome of this referendum and the rushed admittance of Crimea into the Russian fold will further infringe on the rights of large numbers of Crimea’s inhabitants who will be forced to make heart-rending choices regarding their loyalty to the Ukrainian state and their citizenship, with serious consequences for their families, their property rights and their future.  

One country appropriating at will a part of a neighboring country is a profoundly disturbing signal to everyone that once again,  territories are up for grabs,  and that the international order which guarantees the sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of state borders can be rewritten by force. Who will be next?