NUJU, together with human rights organizations, calls for release of citizen journalist Amet Suleymanov

NUJU, together with human rights organizations, calls for release of citizen journalist Amet Suleymanov

The statement condemning the imprisonment of citizen journalist of Crimean Solidarity, Amet Suleymanov, diagnosed with heart disease, was signed by the ZMINA Human Rights Center, the Human Rights Organization Crimean Process, Platform for Political Prisoners Release, Crimean Human Rights Group, KrymSOS, Association of Relatives of Political Prisoners of the Kremlin, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), Institute of Mass Information, Center for Civil Liberties, Almenda Civil Enlightenment Center, Human Rights Center Diia, and the Ukrainian branch of the International PEN Club.

On April 6, 2023, Russian security forces took Amet Suleymanov into custody and transferred him to the Simferopol Pre-Trial Detention Center. Before that, he had stayed under house arrest due to his heart condition. Earlier, the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don (Russia) sentenced him to 12 years in a high-security prison under a fabricated case of ‘terrorism.’

The participants in this action called on the competent state bodies of Ukraine to:

• ensure an effective investigation into and documentation of the circumstances of the illegal deprivation of liberty of Amet Suleymanov and take all possible measures to bring the guilty parties to justice;
• impose personal sanctions against persons, citizens of the Russian Federation, involved in the illegal imprisonment of Amet Suleymanov;
• ensure an effective investigation into the facts of illegal deprivation of liberty and other gross infringement of fundamental human rights in the temporarily occupied Crimea;
• provide timely information on gross infringement of human rights in the occupied Crimea at the national and international levels;
• ensure full implementation of the Law of Ukraine On Social And Legal Protection Of Persons Deprived Of Personal Freedom As A Result Of Armed Aggression Against Ukraine, And Members Of Their Families, in particular, the development and approval of the necessary norms on ensuring medical and rehabilitation assistance, provision of sanatorium-resort treatment.

They also addressed the governments of foreign countries and international organizations, in particular the participants in the International Crimean Platform, with a call to:

• demand that the Russian Federation stop the politically motivated criminal prosecution of Amet Suleymanov and release him;
• conduct international consultations to find mechanisms for the release and monitoring of the health of Ukrainian prisoners in the territory of the Russian Federation and the occupied territories;
• introduce personal sanctions against persons involved in the illegal imprisonment of Amet Suleymanov and other citizens of Ukraine in the occupied territories;
• increase diplomatic, sanction, and other types of pressure on the Russian Federation in order to prevent new violations of human rights in the occupied Crimea and other occupied territories of Ukraine, as well as speed up the de-occupation of all territories of Ukraine;
• assist the Government of Ukraine in the investigation into war crimes, crimes against humanity, and gross infringement of human rights in occupied Crimea and other occupied territories;
• use the International Crimean Platform, the mechanisms of the UN, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and other international organizations to the utmost to speed up the release of Crimean political prisoners and civilian hostages in the occupied territories, to respond effectively to human rights violations in the occupied Crimea and promote the de-occupation of all territories of Ukraine;
• further increase comprehensive, in the particular military, support for Ukraine to de-occupy all territories of Ukraine, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, as a necessary condition for the protection of human rights and the cessation of politically motivated persecution of Ukrainian citizens.

As earlier reported, Amet Suleymanov is a citizen journalist and a Crimean Solidarity non-governmental organization streamer. He covered searches and arrests of Crimean Tatars, for which he was detained twice by the occupation authorities in 2017 and 2019. In recent years, he had been forced to limit his journalistic activities due to heart disease. He had been under house arrest for political reasons in the temporarily occupied Crimea since March 2020.

On March 11, 2020, Russian security forces arrested him and three other Crimean Tatars on trumped-up charges of participating in the activities of a terrorist organization (Hizb ut-Tahrir, recognized as a terrorist organization in the Russian Federation). The next day, the occupation “court” in Crimea sent him under house arrest, given his heart problems. On October 29, 2021, the Southern District Military Court (Rostov-on-Don, Russia) sentenced Amet Suleymanov to 12 years in prison. Suleymanov’s defense filed an appeal, but on February 9, 2023, the Military Court of Appeal (Vlasikha, Russia) upheld the court’s verdict of the first instance.

Amet Suleymanov is at risk of dying in prison due to the immediate need for heart valve replacement surgery. Deprivation of liberty is effectively a death sentence for a journalist.

Earlier, the UN Committee against Torture appealed to the Russian Federation with a demand to suspend the execution of the sentence with actual imprisonment. The UN insists on conducting a comprehensive medical examination and providing the necessary treatment.

The detention of Amet Suleymanov in a pre-trial detention center is particularly alarming against the background of the systematic failure to provide proper medical care to other Crimean political prisoners, as a result of which two political prisoners — Kostiantyn Shyrinh and Dzhemil Gafarov — already died in prison in February 2023, and famous citizen journalist Iryna Danylovych announced a hunger strike, says the address.

NUJU Information Service