Statement by human rights organizations regarding the imprisonment of Crimean Tatar citizen journalist Amet Suleimanov

On April 6, 2023, Russian security forces took into custody and took to the Simferopol pre-trial detention centre Amet Suleimanov, a citizen journalist of Crimean Solidarity, who was under house arrest due to a heart condition. Earlier, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced him to 12 years in a high-security prison in a trumped-up case of “terrorism”.

Amet Suleimanov is a citizen journalist, a streamer of the Crimean Solidarity civic association. He used to cover searches and arrests of Crimean Tatars, for which he was detained twice by the occupation authorities in 2017 and 2019. In recent years, he limited his journalistic activities due to heart disease. He had been under house arrest for political reasons in the temporarily occupied Crimea since March 2020. 

On March 11, 2020, Russian security forces arrested him and three other Crimean Tatars on trumped-up charges of participating in the activities of a “terrorist organization” (Hizb ut-Tahrir, recognized as a terrorist organization in the Russian Federation). The following day, the occupation “court” in Crimea sent him under house arrest, taking into account his heart problems. On October 29, 2021, the Southern District Military Court (Rostov-on-Don, Russia) sentenced Amet Suleimanov to 12 years in prison. Defence of Suleimanov filed an appeal, but on February 9, 2023, the Military Court of Appeal (Vlasikha, Russia) upheld the verdict of the court of first instance.

Amet Suleimanov is at risk of dying in prison due to the immediate need for heart valve replacement surgery. Deprivation of liberty is actually a death sentence for the journalist. 

Earlier, the UN Committee against Torture appealed to the Russian Federation with a demand to suspend the execution of the sentence providing for the actual imprisonment. The UN insists on conducting a comprehensive medical examination and providing the necessary treatment.

The placement of Amet Suleimanov in a pre-trial detention centre is particularly alarming against the background of the systematic failure to provide proper medical care to other Crimean political prisoners, as a result of which two political prisoners — Kostiantyn Shyrinh and Dzhemil Hafarov —died in February 2023 in places of deprivation of liberty, and a political prisoner citizen journalist Iryna Danylovych went on a hunger strike.

We call on the competent bodies of the state authorities of Ukraine to take the following actions:

• ensure an effective investigation and documentation of the circumstances of the illegal deprivation of liberty of Amet Suleimanov and take all possible measures to bring the guilty persons to justice;
• introduce personal sanctions against persons — citizens of the Russian Federation, involved in the illegal imprisonment of Amet Suleimanov;
• ensure an effective investigation of facts of illegal deprivation of liberty and other gross violations of fundamental human rights in the temporarily occupied Crimea;
• ensure timely information spreading on gross violations of human rights in the occupied Crimea at the national and international levels;
• ensure full implementation of the Law of Ukraine “On Social and Legal Protection of Persons Deprived of Personal Freedom as a Result of Armed Aggression Against Ukraine, and Members of Their Families”, in particular, the development and approval of the necessary norms on the provision of medical and rehabilitation assistance, provision of sanatorium-resort facilities treatment

We appeal to the Governments of foreign countries and international organizations, in particular the participants of the International Crimea Platform to take the following actions:

• demand from the Russian Federation to stop the politically motivated criminal prosecution of Amet Suleimanov and release him;
• hold international consultations to find mechanisms for the release and monitoring of the state of health of Ukrainian prisoners on the territory of the Russian Federation and the occupied territories;
• introduce personal sanctions against persons involved in the illegal imprisonment of Amet Suleimanov and other citizens of Ukraine in the occupied territories;
• increase diplomatic, sanction and other types of pressure on the Russian Federation in order to prevent new violations of human rights in the occupied Crimea and other occupied territories of Ukraine, as well as speed up the de-occupation of all territories of Ukraine;
• provide assistance to the Government of Ukraine in the investigation of war crimes, crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights in the occupied Crimea and other occupied territories;
• maximally use the International Crimea Platform, the mechanisms of the UN, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other international organizations in order to speed up the release of Crimean political prisoners, civilian hostages in the occupied territories, to respond effectively to human rights violations in the occupied Crimea and to promote the de-occupation of all territories of Ukraine;
• continue increasing comprehensive, in particular military, support for Ukraine with the aim of deoccupying all territories of Ukraine, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol as a necessary condition for the protection of human rights and the cessation of politically motivated persecution of Ukrainian citizens.

Human Rights Centre ZMINA

Human rights organization “Crimean Process”

PLATFORM FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS 

Crimean Human Rights Group

CrimeaSOS

Association of Relatives of the Kremlin Political Prisoners

Union of Journalists of Ukraine

Institute of Mass Information

Center for Civil Liberties

The Center for Civic Education “Almenda”

Diya Human Rights Center

Ukrainian centre of PEN International