The Kiev District Court of Simferopol the day before, June 7, fined the editors of the Crimean Tatar newspaper “Kyrym” 300 thousand rubles under the protocol on “discrediting” the army (Part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code). Journalist Elmaz Akimova reports this with reference to lawyer Lilya Gemedzhi.
The reason for the administrative case was an essay by a member of Kurultai of the Crimean Tatar peopleAli Ozenbash, published in the newspaper in the fall of 2023. In it, he argues that Crimeans need to refuse to participate in the war in Ukraine.
«The fact that we were issued a Russian passport does not change this reality. After the occupation, it was impossible not to receive this document. But we did not swear an oath, did not give an oath to this state, and I believe that we are not obliged to obey its strange orders, especially those that lead to death,» an excerpt from Ozenbash's essay is quoted in «Grati»; the original text is currently unavailable on the website of the «Kyrym» newspaper.
A member of the Kurultai advises not to accept summonses, not to go to the military registration and enlistment office, and if taken there by force, to refuse service on religious grounds. «There are those who have compared and come to the conclusion: rather than be a murderer without reason or die, it is better to be in custody. These are new times,» Ozenbash summarizes in his essay.
On the morning of May 17, security forces came to search the editorial office of the Kyrym newspaper, as well as the houses of its founder Seyran Ibragimov and editor-in-chief Bekir Mamutov. Initially, the Crimean Solidarity project wrote that protocols on “discrediting” the army were drawn up against Ibragimov and Mamutov.
The claims of Center “E” were caused by another material of the Crimean Tatar newspaper — a reprint of part of the report of UN Secretary General Antonio Guetteres on human rights violations on the peninsula. The material was published on the pages of the publication in October 2023; it is also not available in the electronic version on the Kyrym website.
“In total, since 2014, 55 people have forcibly disappeared in Crimea. Of these, 48 are men and seven are women. To this day, 14 people are listed as missing. Two cases resulted in the death of missing people, 34 were injured, including six women, seven were released,” the Grati publication quotes an excerpt from the report.
The security forces claim that, according to their data, “there are no statements or reports of torture and cruel treatment of citizens by security forces from 2017 to the present.” On this basis, as Grati writes, Ibragimov and Mamutov were accused of publishing “false” information (Part 9 of Article 13.15 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). It is not yet known when the trial will take place on these reports.
The Kyrym newspaper has been published since July 1989. This is the first publication in the Crimean Tatar language, which appeared on the peninsula after the return of the Crimean Tatars from the places deportation of 1944. In 2021, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Bekir Mamutov, was already fined for publishing a UN report mentioning the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, banned in Russia.