Discrimination, license withdrawal for organizations, bans on holding public events

Other media from the ATR Media Holding underwent a similar fate, particularly the children’s Crimean Tatar TV channel “Lale” and the FM radio stations “Meidan” and “Leader,” which were forced to stop both analogue and satellite broadcasting. The website “15 minutes” and the QHA news website were also unable to register²³⁰.

A group of seven students wanted to film a video in support of the Crimean Tatar ATR channel, but they were detained by the police on the street. They were tried on the same day, at the Kyiv District Court of Simferopol, where they were accused of “holding an unsanctioned rally.” Their lawyer, Jemil Tamishev, requested that the court session be moved so that he would have time to study the case material, but had been denied his request by the court²³¹.

Before March 31, there had been a number of Crimean Tatar media active in the peninsula, including the “Yañı dünya,” “Qırım,” “Voice of Crimea,” and “Avdet” newspapers, the “Armanchik,” “Kasevet,” and “Yıldız” journals; independent news agencies such as “Crimean News QHA” and the online portal “15 minutes.org,” the ATR and Lale TV channels, and radio Meidan. According to the Committee for the Protection of Independent Crimean Tatar Media, only one media outlet was able to register before April 1—the “Voice of Crimea. New” newspaper²³².

The puppet Crimean regime announced that they would be helping to create a new Crimean Tatar TV channel on the next day, April 2. It seems reasonable to suppose that it will be loyal to the occupational government²³³.
On April 6, the Council of Teachers organization was denied a renewal of their registration. Earlier, the Council of Teachers held the lease contract to a building in Bakchisarai, which hosted the regional department of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People. The lease agreement was already annulled by the Commercial Court in September 2014, and the decision was upheld by the court of appellate jurisdiction. By March 31, the Mejlis removed all of its assets and vacated the premises.²³⁴.
On April 16, the pastor of the Protestant “New Life” church, Bishop Anatoliy Kalyuzhniy said that not one Protestant community in the Crimea had not been allowed to-register as a religious organization according to Russian law. Due to the loss of their legal status, they are no longer able to rent premises and continue their functions. Over 30% of the Protestant communities in the occupied peninsula do not own any premises and need to rent them.

Kalyuzhniy also reported that the security services [of Russia - transl.] are actively working on community leaders. There now exists a database of church leaders, whose contacts with believers in mainland Ukraine are monitored²³⁵.

Against the backdrop of official commemorative events, dozens of people, including journalists, were being arrested throughout the day.

The most high profile incident took place in the afternoon in Simferopol. Participants of the motor rally dedicated to the Memorial Day for Victims of the Deportation planned to ride from Simferopol to Bakhchysarai with Crimean Tatar flags. Approximately 50 cars left the Ak-Mechet village, where many Crimean Tatars reside, for the drive to Bakhchysarai. However, they were blocked off by the Russian State Traffic Safety Inspectorate (STSI) right after the “Zapadnaya” bus station, near a fuel station.

A short while later, Vice Prime Minister of Crimea Ruslan Balbek and Head of the Crimean State Commission On Inter-Ethnic Relations and Affairs of Deported Citizens of the Republic Zaur Smirnov came to the fuel station personally. They began a conversation with participants of the rally, who expressed their indignation at the situation. All of the youths except those who were not yet of age were detained by occupational police forces²³⁷.

All of the detained participants of the rally were released after questioning at the Zheleznodorozhny District Office of Internal Affairs of Simferopol, which included taking their fingerprints.
On June 1, unknown persons took down the national flag from the front of the former Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People building in Simferopol. The main entrance doors were open, and the flag that had earlier been located above the door was taken down and left near a pole opposite the entrance.

Crimean Tatar activists returned the flag to its former spot²³⁸.

The building which used to host the Mejlis office, the “Crimea” Charity Foundation and the “Avdet” newspaper office has been sealed off since September 2014.
On the evening of June 17, the Crimean Tatar ATR channel returned to the air waves from Kyiv. The channel used to be located in Crimea, but it stopped transmission on April 1, as the occupational government refused to grant it a media license. On the next day, June 18, the Chairman of the Committee on Informational Policy of the occupational government of Crimea, Sergei Shuvaynikov, said that ATR journalists that will continue satellite broadcasting from Kyiv will be held liable for breaking Russian law should they do so while preparing their materials.

Shuvainikov added that he views the ATR’s move to Kyiv in a negative light, as he believes that Ukraine is currently “fighting an information war against Russian Crimea” ²³⁹.

On June 25, ATR journalist Lilya Budjura announced that ATR channel staff who were working in Crimea in accordance with the completely legal accreditation certificate given by Roskomnadzor to “Queenmedia” are being forbidden from filming in public offiices relevant to Crimean Tatar culture. According to her information, a variety of such public offices received a letter from the Ministry of Internal Policy and Information of the Crimean Republic, where it is recommended not to admit ATR, “15 minutes,” “Crimea. Realities” and QHA journalists onto the premises. ²⁴⁰.
On July 24, it became known that the pension of Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Ilmi Umerov had been reduced nine times. The basis for the decision was a medical examination that re-evaluated his disability status. Before the occupation, Ilmi Umerov had headed the Bakhchysarai District State Adminstration. He left the post last August, as he had refused to swear the oath required of all Russian civil servants.

According to Umerov’s opinion, the re-evaluation of his disability status and the corresponding reduction in pension might be connected to his political position. “I know with certainty that Russian Federal Security Bureau representatives showed up at [my] clinic and checked all of my records. They also had the doctors give explanatory reports on whether ‘Umerov was really sick and whether there really is a basis of giving him a pension,’” Umerov said.

Earlier, the politician’s daugher, Aishe, had been fired from the Bakhchysarai Historical and Cultural Preserve. She had been told “to her face” that “Umerov’s daugher won’t be working with us.” Umerov’s wife had owned an art salon, but her request to extend the rent of its premises had been denied. She had to close the business²⁴¹.
In the last decade of August, a case of open and obvious discrimination against Crimean Tatars garnered a wide resonance. The incident took place at a Simferopol barber shop located at 60 Kyivska street.

On August 18, the owner of the shop, Natalia Radostina, forbid two of her workers, young Crimean Tatar women, to speak the Crimean Tatar language at work. On the next day, August 19, the owner of the barber shop attempted to forbid the same to Crimean Tatar Rustem Seitov, also a worker. Moreover, she forbid him from performing the salah (namaz) ritual prayer at work. According to the barber, when he applied for the job six years ago, he had stated openly that he was a Muslim and needed to perform the salah ritual, which the administration had no problem with. Seitov said that previously the barbers had spoken both Russian and Crimean Tatar to their clients and among themselves, and before the Russian occupation this had caused no problems whatsoever.²⁴².

The young man recorded his conversation with the owner on his phone.²⁴³“So there are three of you here, and there will never be any more again,” Radostina said.

After the incident became public, the young man and two women, also Crimean Tatars, were no longer allowed to come to work. However, they were not formally fired and their documents were not returned.

Lydumila Lubina, the “ombudsman” appointed by the occupational government, said that it is necessary to review the situation in detail and find out whether the workers used the owner’s inability to understand their language to “insult her or call her names.”²⁴⁴.

Rustem Seitov sees the incident as an open act of discrimination and intends to fight for his rights.

Notably, according to the “Constitution” of the so-called “Republic of Crimea,” the “state languages” in the occupied peninsula are currently Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar.
On September 25, it became known that representatives of commercial structures that received licenses to lease land in Zhigulina Roscha (Mirnoye village of the Simferopol district) near the Meganom shopping center on Simferopol’s Eupatoria highway began to demolish buildings erected by the Crimean Tatars on the “protest glade,” which has existed for over ten years now²⁴⁵.
On November 14, occupational police workers attempted to ban the Chairman of the Central Election Committee of the Kurultai of the Crimean Tatar People Zair Smedlyayev from taking the Crimean Tatar flag to a stadium wheretwo Crimean Tatar teams were playing each other from the Ahmetham Sultan prize. The incident happened in Petrivka village of Krasnohvardiiske Region of Crimea. Smedlyayev insisted that the tamga is not a prohibited symbol and said that the police could officially fine him if he is in violation of a law. After that, the representatives of the occupational law enforcement withdrew their complaints²⁴⁶.
On November 23, the puppet Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea issued a decree titled “On Reorganizing State Autonomous Institutes Under the Jurisdiction of the State Committee on Inter-Ethnic Relations and Deported Citizens of the Republic of Crimea,” which disbanded two Crimean Tatar media outlets: the newspaper “Yañı dünya” and the literary journal “Yıldız.”²⁴⁷. Their legal successor would be the Ismail Gasprinsky Media Center.
On December 9, the Simferopol city administration rejected the request to hold a rally dedicated to International Human Rights Day on December 10. The request was filed on December 3, by Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Ilmi Umerov²⁴⁸.
On December 22, Ukrainian MP and Commissioner of the President on the Affairs of Crimean Tatars Mustafa Dzhemilev gave a detailed commentary to Svoboda Radio about the latest string of disappearances and talked about the situation in the peninsula in general. According to the MP, over 20 Crimean Tatars vanished without a trace since the beginning of the Russian occupation of Crimea²⁴⁹. Moreover, Dzhemilev noted the case of Invir Krosh (see above for a full description), when “the person was tortured not to extract any kind of information, but to force him to become a ‘squealer,’ a ‘rat.’”

On December 24, the leader of the collaborant government of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, gave an interview to the Russian NTV channel, wherein he called the “persecution of Crimean Tatars” a “bold-faced lie.” According to Aksenov, this is all just “speculation by persons who have never been in Crimea”²⁵⁰.

In turn, First Deputy of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Nariman Dzhelyal gave an interview to the “Crimea.Realities” where he said: “the statements of local government representatives about problems and Crimean Tatar oppression ‘not existing’ are an absolute lie.” “People continue to be kidnapped, legal prosecution continues, searches and interrogations continue. There are also hidden problems, such as discrimination on the job market or the firing of Crimean Tatars from government positions. And so on.”²⁵¹.
On December 26, it became known that the League of Crimean Tatar Women charity organization was evicted from the premises it had been renting from the Gasprinsky Republican Crimean Tatar Library.²⁵².

The League of Crimean Tatar Women is headed by Safinar Dzhemileva, wife of Mustafa Dzhemilev, the Commissioner of the President of Ukraine on Crimean Tatar Affairs.

“Counteraction” of Anti-Semitism

According to the Prosecutor’s Office statement, the arrestee is also being suspected of an arson attempt on the “Chukurcha-Jami” mosque in June 2014 and of an attempted terrorist attack in August, when a bag with explosives was found near the Prosecutor’s Office building.

Moreover, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, the young man is a militant from the volunteer “Azov” Batallion and had already participated in the anti-terrorist operation in Donbass on the side of Ukraine. Apparently he joined the Ukrainian police after desecrating the synagogue, trying to burn down the mosque, and an attempted terrorist attack on the Crimean Prosecutor’s office (in August of 2014 at the earliest), then went to war, and by spring of 2015 returned to Crimea to await arrest.

The Azov Regiment’s PR Department immediately refuted Poklonskaya’s statement. “The information about an Azov member allegedly preparing a terrorist attack in Crimea, which has been temporarily occupied by Russian aggressors, is yet another provocation that has no basis in reality,” the Azov statement reads. The “Azov” PR department stressed that the regiment does not have any branches or groups in Crimea²⁵⁴.

On September 25, Natalia Poklonskaya, who calls herself the Prosecutor General of the Crimea, announced that the young man who had been arrested after being accused of the desecration of the Simferopol synagogue, an arson attempt on a mosque, and a terroristic act near the prosecutor’s office²⁵⁵, and who had been said to have been a fighter of the “Azov” batallion²⁵⁶, had “admitted his guilt and gave away the names of others.” According to the occupants’ proxy, “they’re only brave when they have masks on and drink tea with mind-altering substances. When the tea’s gone, so is their bravery.” Poklonskaya stated that “the criminal proceedings have almost been completed, and the matter will be taken to court shortly.”²⁵⁷.

As it is well-know what sort of investigation methods are applied to Ukrainian activists arrested in occupied Crimea, it can also be inferred that the investigation had “helped” the young man in his “confession” and accusation of others not just by limiting his access to “tea with mind-altering substances.” In similar cases, the most famous of which is the case of Oleg Sentsov and Aleksandr Kolchenko, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights on Ukraine, law enforcement staff have tortured the detained to make them plead guilty and accuse others. This did not stop the accused from being sentenced to prison time for a term of 10 to 20 years.

Unfortunately, as the young man is being accused of committing anti-Semitic and Islamophobic crimes in Crimea and of being an “Azov” member at the same time, we are expecting to see yet another mock political trial²⁵⁸.
To recap, the Simferopol “Ner Tamid” synagogue was defaced on the night of February 27, 2014. An unknown vandal wrote “Death to Kikes” in black paint on the doors of the building. They also drew a swastika to the left of the doors and on the doors themselves, and a wolfsangel (a Runic symbol used in the Third Reich and currently widely spread among neo-Nazis) to the right of the doors. The plaques of the Progressive Judaic Religious Community and the Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Crimea, hanging on both sides of the door, were crossed out.

The wolfsangel was inverted in comparison to the one usually used by Ukrainian nationalists (including those fighting in the Azov batallion), which interpret it as a monogram of the “I” and “N” letters, as a contraction of the “Ideya Natsii” (“Nation’s Idea”) slogan.

Notably, three days before that moment, on February 25, a radical right activist with a criminal past, Igor Moseychuk, spoke on behalf of the Right Sector at the 112 TV channel. In particular, Moseychuk stated that Ukrainian patriots are ready to come to Crimea to counteract separatist tendencies. His speech garnered a wide resonance in Crimea and was actively used by pro-Russian propaganda to make the residents of the peninsula fear Ukrainian “punisher Fascists.” Of course, nobody paid attention to the fact that the man speaking on behalf of the organization was a freshly-released convict that had never been part of the Right Sector. By that point, the Right Sector had been demonized by the media and had been seen by many in the Crimea as an extremist or even terrorist organization.

Moseychuk had also been wearing a shirt with a regular, non-mirrored wolfsangel. We tentatively put forward the theory that this speech was also the source of the neo-Nazi symbol. The desecration of the synagogue was also actively used for propaganda, to discredit Ukrainian nationalists (which was an umbrella term for all pro-Ukrainian independence, sovereignty, and territorial inviolability) and to create a Fascism scare for the residents of the peninsula.

Notably, the act of vandalism happened less than 24 hours after Simferopol was taken under control by the Russian military. As far as we are aware of, there are no indications of the presence of organized Ukrainian national-radical groups in the middle of the Crimean peninsula at that time.

The attempt was qualified as “hooliganism,” and the case was closed. However, it had been reopened at the insistence of Natalia Poklonskaya after a suspect was arrested in the spring of 2015.

Later, on early June 13, 2014, an unknown criminal threw three bottles of incendiary mixture at the Chukurcha-dzhami mosque in Simferopol’s Lugovoye microdistrict. The arson attempt was caught on camera.

Two plastic windows were damaged in the attempt; the building itself sustained no significant damage. A nearby fence had also been defaced with a swastika, the date “13.06.2014” and the “NS/WP” letters, signifying the ideology of the vandal (National Socialism, “white power”). It is assumed that the vandal and the arsonist are the same person.

The occupational law enforcement qualified his actions according to Article 280, Part 1 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Public Appeals for the Performance of Extremist Activity”)²⁵⁹.

The accused was found guilty and sentenced to 2,5 years of probation and disqualified him from practicing certain professions, i.e. working in the media, teaching or organizing mass events for the entire 2,5-year-long term.

Immediately afterwards, the accused was granted amnesty in respect to the main penalty (2,5 years of probation), based on the Decree “On Granting Amnesty In Connection With the 70th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” Thus, only the prohibition on practicing certain professions remained in force²⁶⁰.

At the end of his speech, leader of the puppet DNR regime Aleksand Zakharchenko called the Ukrainian leaders “sorry Jews”²⁶¹.  

He also said that Poroshenko does not have the right to lead “Cossack” Ukraine on principle. “If your own common sense does not win, then the common sense of the Ukrainian people will, and it will force you do what is good for the Ukrainian people. I’d like to say... that I can’t remember a time in Ukrainian history when the Cossacks would have been ruled over the people who weren’t quite the... Who hadn’t ever run around with a sabre. I can’t remember Jews going...” The leader of Luhansk terrorists, Igor Plotnitsky (who is himself sometimes called a “kike” by the representatives of Russian neo-Cossack illegal militant groups in control of certain residential areas of the Luhansk Region) understood where his “colleague” was going and attempted to improve on that thought by saying jokingly: “Well, why not? They can take a look on what do you call it, YouTube, there’s even a song called ‘When the Jewish Cossacks Rose Up.’” Not wanting to reduce his point to a joke, the leader of the Donetsk terrorists parried: “Those are not Jewish Cossacks, not by a long shot, and the sorry representatives of a large and great people... certainly hadn’t ruled over Cossacks.”

Zakharchenko then ended his conversation with the press with the following powerful statement: “I believe that Taras Bulba and Taras Shevchenko will roll over in their graves many times after seeing such rulers in Ukraine,” thus demonstrating his incredible ignorance of literature (Taras Bulba is a historic novella by Nikolai Gogol - transl.)²⁶². 

Some Russian TV channels streamed the news conference live.

Notably, last year the Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs called the acts of pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region, which were supported by Russian special forces groups, “protests that are a reaction to the violence towards all those who do not agree with the anti-Semitic acts of the coalition reigning in Kyiv.”²⁶³.

The National Minority Rights Monitoring Group checked this report and needs to state here that representatives of the Luhansk Jewish community who stayed in territories occupied by Russians and local collaborants deny that there had been an attempt to seize the building by force.

In her letter, I. Razinkova, Executive Director of the Luhansk Regional Jewish Religious Community, wrote the following: “The matter at hand is that the LNR leadership had raised the question of making the ‘Beit Menachem’ school into a cadet corps, and then into a center of out-of-school education. We used everything within our power to protect the school building. And we were given a message from Plotnitsky that the incident had been a misunderstanding and will not happen again.”²⁶⁵.
On June 16, Igor Plotnitsky, the leader of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” puppet regime, which had been created by Russian aggressors in the occupied district of Luhansk Region, made yet another anti-Semitic statement as part of a speech given in Russia²⁶⁶.

The leader of Luhansk terrorists gave a lecture at the Kostroma State University named ater N. A. Nekrasov titled “Contemporary Ukraine as a New Type of Fascist State.” He began his speech with the following: “I’d like to ask the historians... Or maybe the philologists, I’m not sure whom I want to ask more. Why is it called the “euromaidan”? Where did the name come from? The territory? Or maybe the nation? Which is mostly heading what used to be our Ukraine? I don’t have anything... Waltzman, Groysman, and many others. I don’t have anything against the Jews as a nation, as the chosen people, we will talk about this separately if possible. But the point is that when we call what is happening the “euromaidan” [Plotnitsky is linking this to the Russian word for Jews, “evrei.” - transl.], we are saying that the people who suffered most under Nazism are now leading it...”²⁶⁷.

After the installation of the puppet “Donetsk People’s Republic” in Russian-occupied territories of the Donetsk Region, the young woman moved to Kyiv.

She returned to Donetsk to visit her mother. Early in the morning of June 17, terrorists calling themselves “the DNR Ministry of State Security” forced their way into the women’s home. According to the victim, two boxes of sniper bullets and a dynamite stick with a fuse were planted among her things, And the young woman was accused of being a sniper for the Right Sector.

From the very moment of her kidnapping, the DNR fighters used anti-Semitic slurs in their speech, as the young woman did not conceal the fact that she was a Jews. The terrorists who kidnapped her, the workers of the DNR Committee for State Security, and even the so-called “DNR Ombudsman,” whom the young woman’s mother appealed to, accused Jews of “inventing” Fascism, wished that all Jews would die, and so on.²⁶⁸

The kidnapped volunteer was taken to an insulation material plant, which had been turned into a prison by the terrorists. For three weeks she had been given practically no water and food, and had been beaten. The young woman was forced to speak to the media and repent for her cooperation with the Right Sector and the Tornado battallion. 

The young woman was imprisoned until July 22. After she gave a public talk to the press in which she said that she had become disillusioned with the Right Sector, she was released.²⁶⁹.