Head of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, Head of the Department of Legal and Foreign Affairs of Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Eskender Bariiev, in an interview with UA: Crimea, told why it is incorrect to use the phrase Ukrainian political prisoners when talking about the Crimean hostages of the Kremlin.
Bariiev stressed that if analyzed, it turns out that Ukrainian political prisoners are those political prisoners who are persecuted by the Ukrainian authorities. Therefore, the phrase Ukrainian political prisoners is incorrect to use.
“Given this, the CTRC clearly singles out the Crimean prisoners of the Kremlin, which includes political prisoners who have been convicted and are serving sentences in colonies, have restrictions or probation, are in a pre-trial detention center, are persecuted and released. By what criteria did we select them? These are the people who were arrested in Crimea and who are directly related to Crimea (lived at the time of the occupation or were born on the peninsula) and were arrested, for example, on the territory of the Russian Federation”,- he explained.
We remind you that the day of the Ukrainian political prisoner in Ukraine has been celebrated since 1975 at the initiative of the politician and dissident Viacheslav Chornovil. This day was established in order to resist the repression and cruelty of the Soviet regime. Then hundreds of activists paid the price for their civic position and received dozens of years in prison.
“Why did the concept of Ukrainian political prisoners appear in 1972? Because then it was one state – the USSR. Then people were persecuted precisely on the basis of ethnicity. Personally, in the conditions of an independent Ukraine, I would use Ukrainian dissidents of the Soviet Union”,- summed up Bariiev.