By Murad Rakhimov | 2024-10-07

TASHKENT -- When Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the Russian authorities resumed persecution of Crimean Tatars, continuing what Moscow did 80 years ago.

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, members of Crimea's titular ethnic group found themselves in an even more difficult situation, according to local politicians and human rights activists.

While tens of thousands have left Crimea over the past ten years, others cannot -- or choose not to -- leave.

One such person is human rights activist and journalist Zarema Ablyamova (an alias) who refuses to leave despite being prosecuted by Russian authorities multiple times since 2014.

Ablyamova was born in Uzbekistan, where her grandmother and family were exiled in 1944. They returned to Crimea only in 1989, when the Soviet Union was crumbling and Tatars finally dared to move back to their homeland.

News coverage on Russian-funded Crimean TV channels paints a picture of prosperity and well-being, she said.

"But it's like looking through toy binoculars ... at a preset image," Ablyamova told Kontur.

The propaganda omits "the regular arrests, searches, inspections, kidnappings and torture with electrical shocks," she said.

Similarly absent are the "forced relocations that come with the sentencing [of activists] -- 5,000 to 7,000km away," she said.

Arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances

Statistics collected since 2014 by Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists and Ukrainian government agencies refute Moscow's denials of persecution in Crimea.

Of the 218 people listed as political prisoners on the peninsula as of September, 133 are Crimean Tatars, according to the Representative Office of the President of Ukraine in Crimea.

Of those, 117 were arrested and convicted as part of the "Crimean Muslims Case," during widespread religious repression that began in 2014.

"Arbitrary arrests, torture and forced disappearances of politicians, activists ..." is how then-European Union Special Representative for Human Rights Eamon Gilmore described the oppression of Crimean Tatars at a May 2023 conference in Brussels.

On October 4, the occupiers in Crimea handed down another lengthy prison sentence, AFP reported.

Igor Kopyl of Sevastopol was convicted of aiding the Ukrainian military. A court sentenced him to 14 years in prison.

Schoolteacher Liliya, like Ablyamova, stayed after annexation. She has witnessed the attempted erasure of Ukrainian and Tatar heritage.

Liliya, who withheld her real name for her own protection, was unable to leave her residence and elderly mother during the 2014 annexation.

"The Ukrainian school curriculum has been abolished, and now we are forced to teach children using Russian syllabi," the math teacher told Kontur, adding that occupation authorities began firing ethnic Tatar school principals immediately after seizing Crimea.

The occupiers "have brought in nationalism and ethnic and religious discrimination," she said.

'Self-deportation'

Meanwhile, Crimean Tatars are trying to avoid being drafted by Russia to fight against their fellow Ukrainians.

"There was a very noticeable wave of mass departures from the peninsula and from Russia immediately after the first summonses were handed out and the authorities announced the decision to draft residents of Crimea," said Ablyamova.

Some Tatars have tried to sign up for alternative civilian service.

Others are being prosecuted for defying summonses from the Russian army.

Aishe, 54, lives in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, but most of her relatives live in Crimea and she keeps in touch with them by phone. She withheld her last name for their protection.

"It is embittering and disappointing to realize that our people have fallen under Russian occupation," she told Kontur. "[My] male relatives fear they will be ... forced to fight against their own country -- Ukraine."

Sabohat Rakhmonova, a journalist in Uzbekistan, participated in the documentary The Crimean Caravan, which features residents of Ukraine who involuntarily became citizens of Russia in 2014.

When the Kremlin announced the "partial mobilization" in September 2022, "most men of draft age chose to leave [Crimea]," she said. "Entire families left."

It amounted to "self-deportation," she added.

'A new tragedy'

The 2014 seizure of Crimea created a foothold for more Russian aggression, said Refat Chubarov, a Ukrainian politician and chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People.

Crimean Tatars were the "first people on the peninsula to openly and widely speak out against the annexation and in support of Ukraine's territorial integrity," he told Kontur.

The occupiers responded by outlawing the Mejlis and labeling it an extremist organization.

"It's believed that during the 10 years of occupation of the peninsula, approximately 35,000 Crimean Tatars have left. Some experts say the number is 50,000," Chubarov said. "For us, this is a huge figure, a new catastrophe, a new tragedy."

In 2013, about 300,000 Tatars lived in Crimea, Chubarov told Kontur.

Ukraine is committed to remembering the tragedies that have befallen the Crimean Tatars.

On September 11 in Kyiv, officials unveiled a memorial to commemorate the three most tragic events in the history of the Crimean Tatar people: the peninsula's annexation by Russia in 1783, the exile of Crimean Tatars into the Soviet interior in 1944 and the annexation in 2014.

In 2015, Ukraine's parliament recognized the 1944 events as genocide. Latvia, Lithuania, Canada and Poland share the same opinion.

"We are fighting for the restoration of justice, for the opportunity for every Crimean to return home to their Crimea, free from Russia and fear," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the memorial's inauguration.

The memorial in Kyiv has been well received by Tatars, said Ablyamova.

"It's important to note that .... citizens of Ukraine continue to be educated about a crime that must never happen again," she said. "Because evil that is not punished is always tempted to return."