She hasn’t been in touch since yesterday.
The editor-in-chief of the Crimean Tatar children’s magazine “Armanchyk” ( a Crimean Tatar children’s game ), 61-year-old Edie Muslimova, has disappeared in annexed Crimea. She has not been in contact since 21 November. Relatives filed a report with the police and began searching, writes “Krymskaya Solidarnost”.
– Yesterday, Thursday, 21 November 2024, at 11 o’clock I spoke to my aunt, Edie Muslimova, for the last time. We talked to her, and she said that she would now finish some chores around the house and leave Simferopol, from Kievskaya Street in the direction of the city of Sudak, to the village of Solnechnaya Dolina to her mother, – said her niece Elzara Muslimova.
According to her, Edia Muslimova’s mother is 91 years old. She needs her daughter’s care and outside help. The elderly woman has a first-group disability.
“Armanchyk” has been published in Crimea since 2011 and is published monthly.
- Earlier, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović stated that Crimean Tatars living in Crimea – especially those who oppose the illegal annexation of Crimea or otherwise express dissent – are subject to numerous serious human rights violations, persecution, discrimination and stigmatization by the Russian occupation authorities. According to her, this situation is further aggravated by the widespread impunity for violations committed on the peninsula.
- Amnesty International’s research briefing, marking the 10th anniversary of Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula, says that since its occupation of Crimea, Russia has sought to change the peninsula’s ethnic composition and has persecuted Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar communities.
- As the human rights project OVD-info notes, after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russian security forces began to put pressure on Crimean Tatar activists. The Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people was declared an “extremist” organization and banned. Criminal cases are being opened against Crimean Tatars, primarily for membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a terrorist organization recognized in Russia.
- Crimean Tatars are regularly searched and interrogated, after which people are taken into custody. Often, those who simply came to support a neighbour who is being searched are also detained.
- As a reaction to the repressions in Crimea on national and religious grounds, the Crimean Solidarity movement was born. It is an association of relatives of political prisoners, lawyers, attorneys and activists. The organization provides legal and financial assistance, organizing fundraising campaigns.
- As a result, Crimean Solidarity activists are also becoming targets of persecution, including those accused of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir.
