6 June is Journalist’s Day in Ukraine. Crimean Tatar Resource Centre congratulates all those involved on their professional holiday and thanks them for their courage, endurance and dedication to truthful reporting during Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
However, we would like to remind you that those journalists who have continued to work in the occupied Crimea since 2014 are also worth of attention.
At first, professional journalists continued to work on the peninsula, but as pressure grew, most of them were forced to leave for mainland Ukraine, while some stayed and clandestinely prepared materials for the Ukrainian media. As a consequence, civic journalism began to develop there. Ordinary people, forced to live under temporary occupation, took mobile phones in their hands and switched on the camera to record numerous offences against representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people.
Russian security forces during searches of activists’ homes or during “court hearings” in Crimea could simply smash the phones and cameras of journalists who were recording everything on video. Sometimes the occupants also used physical force against them. Russian legislation was used as an instrument of pressure and reprisals against activists. Journalists were brought to administrative responsibility for allegedly organising or participating in an unsanctioned rally.
Already now among the numerous political prisoners of the Kremlin are a number of activists, civic journalists, bloggers from Crimean Solidarity.
16 Crimean journalists and activists have paid the price for their stance and are now in the FSB’s custody: Server Mustafayev, Timur Ibragimov, Marlen Asanov, Seyran Saliiev, Remzi Bekirov, Ruslan Suleymanov, Osman Arifmemetov, Rustem Sheikhaliyev, Amet Suleymanov, Riza Izetov, Emir-Husein Kuku, Aleksey Bessarabov, Nariman Dzhelyalov, Vladislav Yesipenko, Asan Akhtemov and Iryna Danylovych.
The peninsula has been turned into a territory of lawlessness with the lowest level of freedom of speech.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 marked a new stage of brutal repression of independent journalism in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, according to the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, the occupiers have killed more than 100 Ukrainian and foreign media workers. Numerous regional media outlets in the temporarily seized territories have been forced to stop working due to threats, destruction of editorial offices, and the inability to operate under the temporary occupation.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Centre calls on the international community to continue to increase pressure on the occupying state so that our compatriots can continue their professional activities.