In the first days of the occupation of Crimea in March 2014, the occupiers wasted no time and decided to immediately begin their pressure on the disloyal population of the peninsula, which was actively resisting.
Thus, on March 9, 2014, many Crimeans in different cities came to the monuments of Taras Shevchenko to protest the occupation. It was on this day that the organizers of the Euromaidan-Crimea movement, Andriy Shchekun and Anatoliy Kovalskiy, were abducted in Simferopol. This order was given personally by the “head” of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, so that the activists would not interfere with the so-called “referendum” on March 16.
The men were tied up, taped over their eyes and kept in the basement for 11 days. They went through horrific torture and ill-treatment in Russian captivity.
Andriy Shchekun recalls that a group of men interrogated him twice, tortured him with electric shocks, promised to cut out his liver alive, and even shot his arms.
“They tied me to a chair, connected me to electricity, and when I lost consciousness and fell, they brought me back to life by kicking me,” -he said.
Anatoliy Kovalsky also recalls that he was most shocked by the cruel actions of those who took them prisoner. The prisoners were kept blindfolded in the basement, where they were subjected to various types of torture.
Also in March, activist Mykhailo Vdovychenko was abducted as he walked through the streets of Simferopol with a Ukrainian flag. He was beaten and taken to the office of Russian Unity, where armed men were present. Later, the man was moved to the basement of the military commissariat, where he was also tortured for 9 days.
Ukrainian soldier Yuriy Shevchenko, who came to Simferopol on his own business and was not involved in the protests, was also taken to the basement. At the railway station, he was detained by members of the ‘self-defense’ because they allegedly mistook him for an ‘activist of some radical organization’. The man was forced into a car, where they cut off part of his ear, then took him to an unknown location and shot in his both legs.
These people, along with other activists, journalists and military personnel, were released from captivity on March 20, 2014, after almost 2 weeks of hellish torture. They were the first to be brutally repressed because of their civic position. Their story has become a symbol of the beginning of the persecution, which intensified significantly in the following years. Indeed, according to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center (CTRC), 362 political prisoners and criminal prosecuted have been recorded during the entire period of occupation, 226 of them are therepresentatives of the Crimean Tatar people.