More than 350 detentions, 210 arrests conducted in occupied Crimea last year

"Fifty-three searches were conducted in 2021 in the occupied Crimea, including 33 searches in the homes of Crimean Tatars. There were also 366 illegal detentions, 330 of Crimean Tatars. The dynamics remain virtually unchanged as there were 364 detentions in 2020," Head of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center Eskender Bariyev announced at a briefing "Analysis of human rights violations in occupied Crimea in 2021", an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

According to him, the Crimeans are mainly detained on suspicion of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir and Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as the Russian army draft evasion and so-called justification of terrorism on social media sites.

In the reporting period, 366 cases of politically motivated interrogations and conversations were also recorded in Crimea against 364 such cases in 2020, indicating a systematic policy of persecution of residents of the occupied Crimea.

As noted, in 2021, 210 illegal arrests were conducted, including 167 against the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, as well as 478 violations of the right to a fair trial, including 397 in relation to the Crimean Tatars, showing an increase of 101 cases compared to 2020.

According to Bariyev, the occupation authorities in Crimea actively used torture to make detainees incriminate themselves and recruit them as FSB witnesses.

In particular, RFE/RL freelance correspondent Vladyslav Yesypenko, Crimean Tatars Aziz Akhtemov, Asan Akhtemov, Nariman Ametov, and Kurtumer Chalhozov were tortured.

In addition, in 2021, the Crimean Tatar Resource Center identified 166 people involved in human rights violations in the Russian-occupied Crimea. Measures were taken to impose sanctions on 50 of them.

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