Durban — Ukranians in South Africa have organised a series of protests in Durban, Cape Town and Pretoria to mark exactly two years today (Saturday) since Russia invaded their country.
In Durban, the protest was scheduled to take place at the Whalebone Pier in uMhlanga at 9am.
Ukrainian Association of South Africa (Uasa) representative Dzvinka Kachur said about 6 000 Ukrainians lived here and they wanted the South African government and civil society bodies to help them find and return the 19 546 Ukrainian children who were forcefully deported to Russia.
In March last year, the International Criminal Court issued warrants of arrest for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova for illegally deporting and transporting Ukrainian children in occupied territories to Russia.
Both were charged with war crimes.
Kachur said that in May 2022 Russia approved legislation that forces Russian citizenship on Ukrainian children deported from Russia or separated from their parents, allowing them to fast-track the adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families to erase their Ukrainian identity.
Children’s names, surnames and dates of birth were modified, making it almost impossible for blood relatives to find their children in Russia.
“We work with Ukrainian human rights organisations such as the Regional Centre for Human Rights, Save Ukraine and The Centre for Civil Liberties, which do their best to track each case and to use all means that international law provides to return Ukrainian children.
“Uasa is also fund-raising for the Voices of Children initiative, which provides psychological support to children affected by war and supports families of children who managed to return from occupied territories and reunite with their families,” she said.
Kachur said since the start of the war more than 6 million Ukrainian refugees, mainly women and children, had lived outside the country, 4.9 million people were internally displaced, while about 37.5 million people remained in Ukraine.
Kachur said Uasa wanted the South African government to urge Russia to stop its military invasion of Ukraine, and restore Ukraine sovereign borders.
Independent on Saturday