At least nine people who sympathized with Ukraine have been killed since the start of Russia’s occupation of Crimea in March 2014 and another 16 are missing. Human rights watchdogs say most of the missing people have been kidnapped.
The real number might be much higher, but it can’t be estimated as Crimean Tatars and other pro-Ukrainian citizens on the peninsula – which had 2 million residents – are living in fear and do not report violations.
Since the Russian military invasion, human rights organizations have documented at least 257 cases of human rights violations, including kidnappings, searches of offices and apartments, arrests and criminal cases being brought on bogus charges.
Russia’s authorities deny all allegations of oppression, saying they operate within the law.
But Russian law is oppressive itself, argues Darya Svyrydova, a lawyer with the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union. She said Russia uses its laws to intimidate the population on the peninsula.
“When you understand that for any post or a like (on social media) you can be put in prison, it works – efficiently and quickly,” she told the Kyiv Post. “There are very few people left who publicly voice their opinion.”
Politically motivated
However, Ilmi Umerov, 59, the deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people (the Crimean Tatar’s parliament) and a former Crimean civil servant, is still not too afraid to talk.
He is accused of making public calls for the violation of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, and, if proven guilty, will face up to five years in prison.
“I’m scared, as every normal person would be – I don’t want to be put in prison,” he told the Kyiv Post. “But the thought that the Russian regime may stay in Crimea for a long time frightens me even more.”
Umerov is under investigation for statements he made in an interview with Crimean Tatar television channel ATR in March 2015. He said that Ukraine, as well as its Western partners, should intensify the sanctions against Russia so that Russia will have to leave Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern regions voluntarily.
The Russian authorities then claimed Umerov was calling for separatism and violence. Umerov says he wasn’t.
“Rather, I’m calling for the restoration of the territorial integrity of Russia, as well as that of Ukraine,” Umerov said. “I’m ready to defend this in court.”
ATR stopped broadcasting in Crimea in April 2015, after Russia’s occupying authorities refused to grant it a license.
Mykola Semena, a journalist who works in Crimea for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kyiv-based Crimea Realities news outlet, faces similar charges to Umerov, under the same anti-separatism law. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has described the case as politically motivated.
But the Russian occupying authorities still claim they’re just following the law.
The Russian-installed Prosecutor General of Crimea, Nataliya Poklonskaya, in her latest interview with Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta said that journalists “should voice their opinions in accordance with Russian law.”
“Otherwise, we have to react,” she said.
Atmosphere of fear
Human rights activists like Tamila Tasheva, the coordinator of the Kyiv-based non-governmental organization Crimea SOS, say that what Russian occupying authorities are in fact repressing those Crimean citizens who do not support the occupying regime.
According to Tasheva, repressive actions have lately become more common, as members of the Russian military and its security services continuing moving into Crimea.
“They have got more resources to spy on people, to carry out interrogations and searches,” she told the Kyiv Post.
She said the Russian authorities were keeping the Crimea population under pressure – either to force critics to pack up and leave the peninsula, or to make them too afraid to speak out.
“An atmosphere of fear rules on the Crimean territory,” Tasheva says. “Since people are afraid, we still don’t know the real number of people who have been kidnapped.”
Tasheva said she knew of several families whose members had been kidnapped, but who had not gone public out of fear for their own safety, and for that of their children.
Ukrainian lawmaker, presidential envoy for Crimean Tatars’ affairs Mustafa Dzhemilev said recently that although the Russian authorities deny being involved in the kidnappings, they are being done by so-called self-defense units that are supported by Russia.
“They kidnap and kill the most talented and bravest people, but not necessarily the leaders of the (Crimean Tatar) movement,” Dzhemilev said on July 28 at the opening of a photo exhibition in Kyiv dedicated to missing Crimean people. “They want people to live in fear.”
Alien legislation
Svyrydova says that the Russian occupying authorities might believe they are following the law, because ever since Russia occupied and annexed Crimea it has applied its own legislation to the Ukrainian territory.
“The thing is that their laws are not in line with principles of human rights. Their laws are not normal for a democratic country,” Svyrydova told the Kyiv Post.
She said Russian legislation was up to 15 years behind Ukraine’s in terms of human rights.
Another problem, Svyrydova explained, is that the Russian occupying authorities were applying Russian criminal legislation to cases that occurred even before Russia invaded and occupied Crimea.
“As an occupying power, Russia can’t do that,” Svyrydova said. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power is obliged to respect the law in place in a territory before its invasion.
“But today (the application of Russian law) had become the main lever of pressure on those of the population who put up any resistance to the occupying regime,” Svyrydova said.
As an example, Svyrydova mentioned the case of Oleksandr Kostenko, who was sentenced to four years and two months in prison. According to prosecutors, during the EuroMaidan Revolution in Kyiv in February 2014, Kostenko, a Ukrainian citizen, injured an officer of the Crimean department of the Berkut riot police force, also a Ukrainian citizen.
“Russia can’t prosecute foreign citizens for something that happened outside its territory, and that did not involve its citizens,” Svyrydova said.
Svyrydova urged all of those whose rights have been violated in Crimea by Russia’s occupying authorities to report their cases to the Russian police in Crimea, and bring the cases to court. Only then, she explained, would a person be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
According to Svyrydova, the European Court of Human Rights might not only rule on human rights violations, but also officially acknowledge Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea.
Unfortunately, this process will take years, Svyrydova said. There are at least 3,000 individual cases registered in the European Court of Human Rights on human rights violations in Crimea and the Donbas.
“In many cases, the victims of the violations either don’t believe that they can win the case, or are afraid for the safety of their families in Crimea,” Svyrydova said.
To see other cases of alleged human rights violations in occupied Crimea, click here.
