Liudmyla Korotkykh, Manager of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, spoke about the tools of Russian pressure on activists in Crimea during the side event of the CTRC on the topic: The Role of Civil Society in Struggle against Discrimination on Russia-Occupied Territories of Ukraine. The event was held within the framework of the OSCE Third Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting.
Full speech
The de facto authorities are actively using all instruments of pressure: illegal detentions, arrests, searches, initiation of fabricated administrative and criminal cases, threats, beatings, torture, and forced abductions. All these crimes are systemic.
Russia, applying its own criminal law in the occupied territory, violates Article 64 of the IV Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of August 12, 1949.
The most common tool is the initiation of criminal cases against Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian activists who oppose the actions of the de facto authorities in Crimea. This is done under Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Organization of a terrorist organization and participation in its activities). As of today, 82 people have been sentenced to 7-19 years in a strict regime colony for allegedly participating in the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, 16 people are in pre-trial detention centers awaiting sentencing, 2 people are under house arrest, 3 people have served 5 years in a strict regime colony and are now under administrative supervision for a period of 8 years.
Lawyers of the defendants of the Hizb ut-Tahrir case are being persecuted and facing obstruction in the performance of their professional duties. In 2022, 3 lawyers involved in the Hizb ut-Tahrir case were disbarred, 3 lawyers were subjected to administrative arrest from 5 to 8 days, and another was fined.
People who support political prisoners are subjected to administrative prosecution. The latest such example was the detention of 34 activists on January 25, 2023, who came to the court building to participate in an open court hearing against the defendants in the Hizb ut-Tahrir case detained the day before. The next day, 27 of the detainees were sentenced to administrative arrest for 10 to 15 days, and one to a fine.
Despite constant pressure and attempts to intimidate by the occupation authorities, Crimean residents continue to actively defend their rights. The practice of holding single pickets in support of political prisoners has become widespread in Crimea. As a rule, they are attended by wives and mothers of prisoners with posters “Our children are not terrorists”, “Crimean Tatars are not terrorists”. In most cases, administrative reports are drawn up against them, and then they are ordered to pay a fine. Family members of political prisoners have also repeatedly stated that they and their homes are under surveillance, which is a violation of the right to privacy. Such actions of the occupation authorities create preconditions for the spread of hatred, hostility, and intolerance towards the indigenous Crimean Tatar people.
As you know, on June 26, it was the Day of the Crimean Tatar National Flag. The day before, the activists were accused of launching a public event without a permit and fined for demonstrating the Crimean Tatar flag. It is a common practice that on the eve of the Crimean Tatar Flag Day, Crimean Tatar activists receive warnings from the occupation authorities of Crimea about the inadmissibility of violating the law on countering extremism. Moreover, the so-called Russian police repeatedly stopped participants in the car rally dedicated to the Crimean Tatar Flag Day.
No terrorist acts were recorded in Crimea before the occupation. Against the backdrop of mass arrests of representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people and accusations of involvement in the activities of a terrorist organization, the first and only terrorist act happened in Crimea in 2018. On 17 October, a fourth-year student of the Kerch Polytechnic College organized a terrorist attack that injured more than a hundred students and staff. The Russian government-controlled online media source Lenta.Ru, among other things, reported that the man, suspected of involvement in the Kerch Polytechnic College bombing, was 23 years old and looked like a Tatar, adding that “…the man started shooting, killing the wounded, and then the guards killed him”. Later it became known that the attack was carried out by Vladyslav Rosliakov, an ethnic Russian. Thus, the government-controlled media attempted to discredit the indigenous Crimean Tatar people by accusing their representative of carrying out the attack.
Despite the fact that the occupation authorities have officially recognized the Crimean Tatar language as one of the state languages, its use is constantly being restricted. There are no Russian-language versions of official pages of occupation authorities’ websites, i.e., they are presented exclusively in Russian, office work is conducted only in Russian, people are even denied the right to use their native language in the so-called courts. There have been cases of threats or dismissal of employees for communicating with each other in their native language.
There were 15 schools and 384 classes with the Crimean Tatar language of instruction in Crimea before the occupation. Despite the fact that 16 new schools were opened in Simferopol, the occupation authorities later changed the status of the schools. Thus, according to the occupation authorities, there are currently 7 schools in Crimea with the Crimean Tatar language of instruction, 3 with Russian and Crimean Tatar languages of instruction, and 6 have been granted the status of general education schools. Teaching in the Crimean Tatar language is allowed only up to the 9th grade and at the request of parents. The administrations of educational institutions create challenges to the submission of applications under various pretexts: there is only one native language in Crimea – Russian, lack of classrooms, lack of teaching staff, lack of textbooks.
There have also been cases of severe refusal: forcing parents to refuse to teach their children in the Crimean Tatar language or reducing the number of hours for studying the Crimean Tatar language and literature.
Therefore, the de facto Crimean authorities, under the pretext of fighting extremism and terrorism, using all available administrative resources, are pursuing a policy of polarizing society, where ethnicity and religion will become a determining factor. This makes it much harder to maintain the progress made in tolerating the attitude of different ethnic and religious groups in Crimea towards each other.