Resolution 2558 (2024)1Provisional version

Countering the erasure of cultural identity in war and peaceParliamentary Assembly

1. Following the occupation of Crimea and parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine by the RussianFederation in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, conventional military targeting hasbeen accompanied by a systematic, state-driven policy of Russification of the occupied areas, historicalimperialistic and neo-colonial revisionism, and denial of a distinct cultural Ukrainian identity to those underoccupation. This denial is based in particular on putting into question the existence of the Ukrainian language,culture and history, and on a portrayal of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a lower cast, ethnicity and race. It iscarried out through: removal of archives; confiscation or replacement of history textbooks; indoctrination,including through militarisation of education; impeded access to education in native, including indigenous,languages; de-contextualisation of artefacts through relocation or changing narratives around them; narrowingthe diversity of commemorative practices; looting; destruction of cultural objects and heritage sites; intentionalrefusals to preserve cultural heritage in order to showcase certain layers of history and erode others; distortiveand ethnically-biased restoration of cultural objects; and neo-imperial renaming of geographical sites.

2. For its part, the Belarusian Government has been implementing a consistent policy of Russificationsince 1994. This policy has taken on a clearly punitive character since 2020, when peaceful mass proteststook place against the disputed results of the presidential election. Censorship is implemented throughblacklists of politically undesirable writers, artists, photographers, actors, musicians, tour guides and museumworkers. More than 200 non-governmental organisations related to the cultural sphere of Belarus have beenforced to cease their activities and close.

3. Furthermore, the Russian Federation pursues a Russification policy towards numerous indigenouspeoples in the country, progressively erasing their cultural identities by restricting the use of their languages,especially in the education system, reducing the domains of their cultural expressions, distorting their historyand depriving them of their historical memory, as well as by capturing and prosecuting ethnic minorityactivists.

4. The Parliamentary Assembly holds that the Russian Federation is using cultural cleansing as a weaponof war within its broader campaign of extreme violence, in order to deny the existence of a different culturalidentity and erase its historical roots, values, heritage, literature, traditions and language. Such culturalerasure, and the deliberate and systematic destruction or looting of cultural property, amount to war crimesand crimes against humanity, and also reveal, together with the official rhetoric of the Russian Federation tojustify its war of aggression, a specific genocidal intent to destroy the Ukrainian national group or at least partof it, notably through the destruction of Ukrainian identity and culture. It is part of the campaign of genocidebeing pursued by the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian people in blatant violation of treaty andcustomary international law.

5. The Assembly recalls that the right of access to culture and enjoyment of one’s own cultural heritageforms part of international human rights law. It strongly condemns the deliberate destruction of culturalheritage occurring today in Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, 1

1. Assembly debate on 26 June 2024 (19th and 20th sittings) (see Doc. 16003, report of the Committee on Culture,Science, Education and Media, rapporteur: Ms Yevheniia Kravchuk). Text adopted by the Assembly on 26 June 2024(20th sitting).

See also Recommendation 2280 (2024).

18 DE DEZEMBRO DE 2024_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

55