From: Human Rights in Ukraine 🇺🇦 Halya Coynash
Russia’s aggressive methods of ‘passportization’ at gunpoint leave no grounds for believing these to be empty threats
Russia is not only using healthcare as a weapon to force Ukrainians on occupied territory to accept Russian citizenship. Without it, expectant mothers have been told that maternity hospitals will not hand over their newborn babies.
Artem Lysohor, Head of the Luhansk Oblast Military Administration, reported on 1 May that “in some cases” maternity wards in the so-called ‘Luhansk people’s republic’’ will hospitalize mothers about to give birth, even if they do not have Russian citizenship. When discharging them a week later, however, they will check whether one of the parents has ‘Russian documents’. If not, they threaten, they will not let the mothers take their own babies.
In noting Lysohor’s report, the Institute for the Study of War pointed out that, “if this report is accurate, such actions violate Article II(d) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defines genocide as “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”.
Voice of Ukraine 