You're reading: Russia Curtails Crimean Free Speech

Many journalists of Crimea’s independent television station ATR broke into tears on air during their last live show at midnight on March 31.

A year after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula, a
censorship and harassment campaign on the part of authorities has become
a part of daily life in Crimea. The world’s only TV channel that
served Crimean Tatars, a native people, went silent on April 1 because
it could not overcome the bureaucracy and other obstacles to continue
broadcasting.

Ostensibly, every news outlet had to re-register in
Crimea by April 1, the deadline set by Russian regulators. Some 232
media outlets got the license, including the only Crimean Tatar
newspaper Yeni Dunya.

Those who did not include FM radio stations
Meydan and Lider, children’s television channel Lale, news website 15
Minutes; Crimean Tatar news agency QHA, and newspapers Avdet and Yildiz.

ATR,
which had broadcast in Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian and Russian languages
since 2006, tried three times to obtain licenses. Each time the
regulator rejected the applications citing mistakes and inaccuracies.

Dunja
Mijatovic the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe
representative on media freedom, voiced concerns that Crimean Tatar
media outlets are having their registration rejected for “subjective
reasons.”

In an emailed statement, Mijatovic said “this is yet
more proof that the politically selective censorship of free and
independent voices in Crimea is continuing.

For Lilya Budzhurova,
deputy head of information policy at ATR, it was a “political attack”
since the occupying authority often blamed the channel for “giving hope
for the return of Crimea to Ukraine.”
Budzhurova said they had little hope of obtaining a license.

“We
thought that the Crimean authorities would take into account the needs
of Crimean Tatars, but we were too naïve,” Budzhurova said, adding that
the channel tried to be objective, a policy that rarely pleased the
authorities.

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ATR
had revised programming by reducing political talk show and news
content while increasing cultural content to appease the authorities.

“Now
all (in power) will be happy – there won’t be any critical media. So
Crimea would eventually turn into the so-called information death camp,”
Budzhurova said.

The license rejection is part of a gaping hole
where independent media used to be as press freedom steadily eroded over
the past year, according to experts.

A journalist works in the newsroom of the Crimean Tatar TV channel ATR on Aug. 5. The channel was shut down on April 1 after Russian authorities refused to license its broadcasts. (Anastasia Vlasova)

Russia slipped four points
to the 152nd spot out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom,
according to the World Press Freedom ranking. Lower numbers indicate
poorer state of press freedom. By comparison, Ukraine is ranked 129th on
this list.

The Mejlis (assembly) of the Crimean Tatar People
issued a statement on March 30, saying that the refusal of Moscow
authorities to re-register Crimean Tatar media was a violation of legal
rights.

There are some 232,000 Crimean Tatars among the two
million population of the peninsula. After the annexation, some 10,000
of Crimean Tatars fled because they faced persecution along with
pro-Ukrainian activists, according to Refat Chubarov, the leader of the
Mejlis.

Chubarov also believes the shutdown of ATR is “killing the nation.”

“For
many years we didn’t have any Crimean Tatar-language media,” Chubarov
told the Kyiv Post. “If a language is not used by any media outlet –
it’s a dead language.”

Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of
the Council of Europe, urged Crimea’s authorities and the operators of
the channel to come to an agreement.

ATR’s staff has no plan to
give up and aims to find a legal way out of the situation. They’re
considering several options, including broadcasting in exile.

Some
media outlets that used to be in Crimea, including Black Sea
telecommunications company, a news websites Black Sea News, Sobytiya
Kryma (Crimean Events), and Crimean News agency (Qırım Haber
Agentlici/Ajansı), have already relocated to mainland Ukraine.

The
Center for Investigative Journalism, founded in 2008, was one of those
who fled to Kyiv after a crackdown on their office in early March 2014,
when camouflaged and armed men with no insignia flooded the peninsula.

The
center’s head, Simferopol native Valentyna Samar, says that the
center’s office was blocked and searched several times. Her colleagues
were also questioned by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and
prosecutor’s office. It was impossible for most of the staff to stay in
Crimea.

“Crimea is turning into a huge military base, what freedom of speech could there be?” Samar says.
The
center still keeps an eye on events in their native Crimea – with the
help of staff journalists who’ve remained and work from home on the
peninsula despite being closely watched by authorities.

On March
13, Natalia Kokorina, the center’s journalist and editor, was questioned
by the FSB. The questioning was followed by a search of an apartment in
Simferopol that belongs to the parents of another local journalist,
Anna Andriyevska, a former editor at the center.

Samar believes it
had something to do with Andriyevska’s recent story on Crimeans
fighting in Donbas and their hope for the peninsula return to Ukraine.
Andriyevska is considered a suspect in a case of encroachment on the
territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, according to Samar.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].