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Arrests Trail Crimean Muslims
12-03-2014
SIMFEROPOL – A feeling of returning to the Soviet era persecution has been dominant among Crimean Muslim Tatars, where arrests and security crackdown has been worrying the religious community since Crimea's annexation by Russia in March.
"Authorities are trying to dissuade people from taking part in similar public rallies," Nariman Dzhelyal, the deputy head of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body, told Radio Free Europe on Saturday, November 29.
"Authorities are also trying to tell people, 'This is what will happen to you if you follow the Mejlis, it can't protect you, don't attend their protest actions.'"
Edem Ebulisov was arrested on November 25 after allegedly assaulting a police officer during clashes near Crimea's northern city of Armyansk in May.
Last month, Musa Apkerimov, Rustam Abdurakhmanov, and Tair Smeldyaev, were arrested and charged with assaulting police.
They were among thousands of Crimean Tatars who clashed with police near Armyansk as their veteran leader, Mustafa Dzhemilev, was prevented by authorities from entering Crimea on May 3.
Moscow-backed authorities of Crimea, the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Russia in March, banned Dzhemilev from entering Crimea for five years.
Dzhemilev is a well-known Soviet-era human rights activist who served six jail sentences in Soviet prison camps from 1966 to 1986.
Crimean Tatar leaders denounced the arrests as another attempt to deter their community from criticizing the peninsula's annexation.
The Russian move to annex Crimea followed an earlier vote in March on the peninsula’s future.
The referendum, approved by 96 percent, was followed by several steps from pro-Moscow Crimean parliament, issuing a law that allows Russia’s annexation of the disputed peninsula.
The hastily organized March 16 referendum was boycotted by Tatars who rejected as held at gunpoint under the gaze of Russian soldiers.
Soviets’ Return
The new arrests were denounced by Crimean leaders, seeing them as a return to the Soviet era policing.
"What kind of police are they talking about?" asks Dzhelyal, the deputy head of the Mejlis.
"About the disbanded Ukrainian Berkut riot police? They are invoking Russian laws, although many police officers still wear Ukrainian uniforms. So this is clearly a politically motivated case."
The lawyer defending Tair Smeldyayev, Emil Kurbedinov, agrees.
"It's 100 percent political," he says.
Kurbedinov says investigators are basing their accusations on a video in which Smeldyayev is allegedly seen attacking a police officer, charges denied by the lawyer.
"Smeldyayev is seen holding a man in camouflage by the collar and the shoulder of his uniform, that's all he does," says Kurbedinov, adding that his client grabbed the man after being struck in the face.
"Investigators say this man suffered pain and that it is enough to open charges, although he was not injured or hurt in any way."
The Tatars, who have inhabited Crimea for centuries, were deported in May 1944 by Stalin, who accused them of collaborating with the Nazis.
The entire Tatar population, more than 200,000 people, was transported in brutal conditions thousands of miles away to Uzbekistan and other locations. Many died along the way or soon after arriving.
The Soviets confiscated their homes, destroying their mosques and turning them into warehouses. One was converted into a Museum of Atheism.
It was not until perestroika in the late 1980s that most of the Tatars were allowed back, a migration that continued after Ukraine became independent with the Soviet collapse in 1991.
The 300,000-strong Muslim minority makes up less than 15 percent of Crimea's population of 2 million and has so far been overwhelmingly opposed to Russia's annexation of the peninsula.
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