On August 24, when Ukraine celebrates its Independence Day, the occupation authorities and collaborators in the Ukrainian Crimea used the occasion to launch a new wave of repressions against Crimean Tatars.


At four o'clock in the morning, security forces broke into the homes of the Crimean Tatars in Bakhchysarai and the Bakhchysarai district of Crimea to conduct searches.

Six people were detained - Remzi Nimetulayev, Ruslan Asanov, Seydamet Mustafayev, Ametkhan Umerov and Eldar Yakubov. The detainees also include Abdulmedzhit Seitumerov, the brother of two Crimean political prisoners from Bakhchysarai, who were arrested in March 2020 and
sentenced to 14 and 17 years in prison.

All the detainees are activists of the ”Crimean Solidarity”.

On August 25, within 12 hours, the criminal occupation authorities in Crimea drew up protocols for more than two dozen detained Crimean Tatars who came to the Kyiv District Court in Simferopol to support their relatives and friends. At the police station, all detainees were issued summonses. Among the detainees was also 64-year-old Remzi Zudiyev, the father of journalist
and human rights activist Lutfiye Zudiyeva, a man with a number of confirmed chronic illnesses, who was deprived of the possibility of taking his medications.

Today, the so-called court issued decisions on administrative arrests for a number of Crimean Tatars for periods ranging from 4 to 7 days.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine strongly condemns the persecution of Ukrainian citizens by the occupation authorities of Crimea on fully fabricated charges and calls on the international community, including the participants of the International Crimea Platform, to continue putting pressure on Russia in order to secure the immediate release of all Ukrainian citizens who have been illegally convicted by the occupying regime in Crimea, and to impose sanction restrictions against people involved in the persecution of the Ukrainian citizens.