Russian authorities have stepped up repression of Crimean Tatars over the past week, activists say, conducting mass arrests and attempting to ban the minority’s self-governing body.
Members of
Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, conducted a series of
coordinated raids across the peninsula on Feb. 11 and 12, searching for and
arresting 12 Crimean Muslims who had spoken with international human rights
monitors in previous weeks.
“This was done in
violation of all these people’s rights,” said KrymSOS coordinator Tamila
Tasheva during a Feb. 13 interview, adding that the arrests occurred “in a
brutal fashion.”
“There was no
order from a judge that would have permitted this to happen,” Tasheva said.
“These people haven’t yet been allowed lawyers. This is an absolute violation
of basic international norms.”
Tasheva said that
while eight of those arrested have been released, four will remain in the
custody of Russia’s FSB until at least April 8.
The names of
those still detained are Vadim Siruk, Enver Bekirov, Muslim Aliyev, and
Emir-Husein Kuku.
Kuku is a member
of the Crimean Contact Group on Human Rights.
In a Feb. 15
request to the occupied territory’s Supreme Court, Crimean chief prosecutor and
defected Ukrainian Nataliya Poklonskaya petitioned to disband the Mejlis, the
Crimean Tatar self-governing body.
Her request –
which, if granted, would brand the Mejlis an “extremist organization – comes
four days after the mass arrests.
Russian condemnation led to arrests?
Russian
authorities accused those arrested of being involved in a banned terrorist
organization.
“It’s not that
they’re Tatars—this is a terrorist organization,” said Poklonskaya. “We don’t
go after people on the basis of nationality.”
But according to
Tasheva, the searches were motivated by the fact that many of those arrested
had spoken with European observers visiting Crimea in previous weeks.
“There was a
resolution of the European Parliament that condemned the action of the Russian
Federation [in Crimea],” Tasheva said.
The Feb. 4
resolution decried “the unprecedented levels of human rights abuses perpetrated
against Crimean residents, most notably Crimean Tatars, who do not follow the
imposed rule of the so-called local authorities, particularly under the pretext
of combating extremism or terrorism.”
According to
Tasheva, the resolution itself may have let the Russian authorities to
retaliate.
“We can infer
that the arrests took place in connection with the monitoring mission,” Tasheva
said. “We can connect the repression of these Crimean Tatars and Muslims with
the European Parliament’s resolution that condemned the Russian Federation.”
Tasheva said that
while searches of people’s homes have been occurring nearly every day since
Russia invaded and occupied the peninsula, this was the first time that they
had occurred on such a mass scale.
“What you hear
about is only the tip of the iceberg of what happens.” Tasheva said.
Refat Chubarov,
leader of the Tatar Mejlis outside of Crimea, gave a press
conference outside the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs building on Feb.
12 in which he ceremonially raised the Tatar flag.
“The human rights
situation in occupied Crimea is worsening with each day,” he said. “The
occupying authorities are directing their entire arsenal of repression against
the Crimean Tatars, and also people of other nationalities that practice
Islam.”
An OSCE
spokeswoman did not reply to a request for comment.
The Ukrainian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the searches and arrests were an
example of “genocide.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Josh Kovensky can be reached at [email protected]
