“Crimean solidarity” claimed of massive purge of journalists in Crimea

“Crimean solidarity” human rights group in Crimea, appealed to the international community and mass media outlets asking to pay attention to elimination of civic journalism in occupied Crimean. Such an appeal is made public in the open letter signed by several activists of “Crimean solidarity”, as to Ukrinform. “We call Ukrainian, independent Russian and international mass media and human rights institutions to support the citizen journalists as their colleagues who are targeted by repressions and persecutions, to make them join the professional unions of journalists and speak of them as of civil journalists and documentalists, since video materials, audio and texts are not only coverage, but recording of systematic persecutions of people in Crimea”, they said. They called to set up observance of human rights agencies of trials over citizen journalists in Crimean and in Russia, where they had been deported. “They arrested well-known in Crimea streamers and bloggers Osman Aryfmemetov and Rustem Sheykheliev. They arrested as well citizen journalist for “Crimean solidarity” Remsi Bekirov who was covering for 4 years all political trials. At the beginning of March 2019 he was starting to collaborate with Grani.ru, he received the press card which allowed him to cover the trials as professional”, ethy added. “Since 4 years, they forbid and persecute all usual ways of protection and advocating of one’s own rights, actually there is no independent journalists (some independent Ukrainian, Russian or international journalists come with short-term missions). Entry for two of them (Olena Savchuk and Alina Smutko) has been banned for a term of 10 years. And each day, there is more and more of events which require to be covered”. As Ukrinform reported, on March 27th there were massive searches and detentions in Crimea, as result of it 24 persons were arrested. On March 29th, all detained Crimean Tatars were illegally deported to Rostov-na-Donu.