In occupied Crimea, human rights defenders have recorded more than 30 cases of pressure on media professionals and citizen journalists since the beginning of the year

Since the beginning of 2024, Human Rights Centre ZMINA has recorded more than 30 cases of pressure on media professionals and citizen journalists in the occupied Crimea.

The project manager of ZMINA, Viktoriia Nesterenko, said this in an interview with Suspilne. 

Photo from open sources

During 2022-2023, Human Rights Centre ZMINA recorded 162 of such cases. These statistics include criminal prosecutions, abductions of journalists, administrative reports, searches and threats on the Internet. Both professional and civil journalists  in the occupied Crimea are under pressure, the human rights defender said.

“Speaking about 2024, since the beginning of this year, we have recorded more than 30 cases of pressure on media professionals and civil journalists, in particular, journalists of the Crimean Solidarity initiative”, Victoria said.

According to her, 16 journalists have been imprisoned by the occupiers, compared to 14 last year.

“Now the list has increased, because now it includes Serhii Tsyhipa, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison in October 2023, and Vilen Temerianov, who is in a pre-trial detention centre and faces up to 20 years in prison”, Victoria added.

For more than a decade, the Russians have developed different ways to put pressure on the media. The Russian occupiers often search homes and offices of media outlets, detain journalists for several days, conduct interrogations, inspections, confiscate personal or work equipment, threaten and impose fines.

Recently, civil journalists and bloggers in the occupied Crimea have been restricted from selling advertising on their websites. Because of this, some media outlets have already stopped working, as advertising is one of their sources of income. According to the human rights defender, this is also another way of putting pressure on independent journalism on the occupied peninsula.

Earlier, ZMINA reported that in the occupied Crimea, two protocols were drawn up against the editorial board of the Crimean Tatar publication “Qirim”: for “discrediting the Russian armed forces” and “disseminating obviously false information under the guise of reliable information”.

Before that, officers of the Centre for Combating Extremism conducted searches in the houses of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper ‘Qirim’ Bekir Mamutov and the founder of the media outlet, Seiran Ibrahimov. 

After inspecting private households, police officers went to the editorial office of the newspaper. Lawyer Edem Semedliaiev was not allowed to enter the building to provide legal assistance.

Protocols on administrative violations were drawn up against both journalists.