Russia keeps on persecuting consistently journalists in Crimea and creates new instruments to fight with those who speak against the occupation and support Ukraine
This was discussed during the press conference on October 23, 2024, in Riga, attended by the representatives of the Crimea Platform Expert Network. The event was held on the sidelines of the Third Parliamentary Summit of the International Crimea Platform which took place this year in Riga.
Journalist Yurii Lukanov, author of the book “Pressing Machine: How Russia Destroyed Freedom of Media in Crimea”, told how since the beginning of the occupation Russia had been fighting with the media and intimidating representatives of international organizations. He also shared the stories of Crimean journalists subjected to politically motivated persecution by the occupation authorities: “I would like to emphasize that, for example, Vladyslav Yesypenko and Iryna Danylovyh are being persecuted for their journalistic activities, but they are accused of fabricated cases of illegal storage and manufacture of explosives.” He also pointed out that in order to better understand the context, foreigners should study more sources: “I understand that foreigners have a Russian perspective on what is happening in the territories of the former Soviet republics and are fascinated by the hoaxer Lev Tolstoy, but there are also many interesting books and films that are produced by other nations and that reveal more information.”
He also emphasized that in order to better understand the context, foreigners should study more sources: “I understand that foreigners have a Russian perspective on what is happening in the territories of the former Soviet territories and are fascinated by the hoaxer Leo Tolstoy, but there are also many interesting books and films that are produced by other nations and that reveal more information.”
Viktoriia Nesterenko, a project manager of the ZMINA Center for Human Rights, added that imprisoned journalists often faced torture and inhumane treatment in places of unfreedom, including punitive psychiatry. “Among the new prisoners since the beginning of the full-scale invasion citizen journalist Iryna Danylovych and three citizen journalists of the Crimean Solidarity initiative are. Since 2022, at least 10 cases of detention of journalists while covering events have been recorded. Some of them later are accused of criminal crimes related to terrorism, like Vilen Temeryanov and Aziz Azizov, and this year the detained streamer Ali Seitablaiev has been handed a conscription notice into the Russian army in the police,” Ms. Nesterenko said.
In addition to criminal persecutions, Russia has been also applying an administrative pressure. Olha Skrypnyk, Chairperson of the Crimean Human Rights Group Board, added that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Russian Federation had expanded the scope of persecution of the residents of Crimea for any public manifestations of a pro-Ukrainian position: “Administrative punishments under the article “discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation” have become a common tool. Crimeans are persecuted for anti-war slogans and statements, posting photos of the Ukrainian flag on social networks, or attempts to call Crimea an occupied territory of Ukraine. We even registered several cases against people who used the song “Stefania”, the winning song of Eurovision 2022, somewhere.”
She also emphasized that 220 citizens of Ukraine from Crimea were being held in places of unfreedom in the occupied Crimea and Russia under politically motivated criminal cases, but only 10 citizens of Ukraine, residents of Crimea, had been released during the period of occupation as part of mutual releases and political agreements.
For more than 10 years of the Crimea occupation, the information environment has changed radically. Haiana Yuksel, a journalist and a member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, told the audience about this. “The occupation consequences in the information sphere are the mythologizing and distortion of history, the presentation of Crimea as an integral part of Russia, and the militarization of consciousness, especially the consciousness of children, who are taught that they must grow up, fight and die for their homeland.”
She also reported that 200 journalists out of 1,229 who had officially worked in Crimea before the occupation and 14 Crimean media were forced to leave Crimea. She added that it was important to tell the world about what was happening in the occupied territories: “I hope that we will have a museum of occupation, like in Riga, and a separate part should be dedicated to the occupation of Crimea and what happened in the information space,” Ms. Yuksel said.
In Riga, capital of Latvia, official events of the two-day Third Parliamentary Summit of the Crimea Platform started, to be attended by delegations of over 40 countries of the world and representatives of international organizations.