Digest

Yesterday, on October 2, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don (Russia) sentenced Nariman Memedeminov, Crimean Tatar blogger and citizen journalist of the Crimean Solidarity movement, to 2 years and 6 months in a penal settlement and banned him from website management for two years.

The United States of America remains one of the most loyal and devoted friends of Ukraine, Ukraine’s ally and partner. For this, significant credit undoubtedly goes to Her Excellency, Marie Jovanovic.

Freed by the Crimean occupiers, on Tuesday, May 7, Ukrainian citizens, fishermen Ruslan Kondratyuk and Andriy Morozov, received the status of victims in criminal proceedings, guided by the prosecutor’s office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

Enforced disappearances are one of the gravest crimes committed in the occupied Crimea. According to CRIMEASOS, 45 persons have gone missing in Crimea over six years of Russian occupation, the fate of 15 of them still remains unknown.

Political persecutions are one of the most common human rights violations in the occupied Crimea. According to CrimeaSOS, 96 persons are still imprisoned as a result of political persecutions by Russian occupation authorities. About half of them (47) are placed in detention facilities in Crimea, another 42 are behind the bars on the Russian territory, whereabouts of several political prisoners is not precisely known. Below, we propose an overview of Ukraine’s work in international judicial institutions with regard to releasing the political prisoners and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Six years of occupation have resulted in normal living conditions for only those in Crimea who are loyal to Russia. Crimean Tatars living in their homeland, religious organizations outside of Russian control, and human rights defenders unmask the utopian picture of happy life on the peninsula so painstakingly painted by Russian propaganda. On February 24, 2020, the team at CrimeaSOS released its second publication of “Encyclopedia of Repressions in Crimea Since the Beginning of the Russian Occupation,” which documents the litany of blatant human rights violations that have occurred. Our reporting documents how the Russian occupiers have violated Crimeans’ right to self-determination and freedom of religion as well as deliberately changed the demographics of the region in the six years since the occupation began.