THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
Vilen Temeriyanov was born in January 1985. He is a resident of the village of Vilne in the Dzhankoi District of Crimea, a Crimean Tatar, and a correspondent for the Crimean Solidarity and Grani.ru publications. Muslim, married, has three minor children. He has been deprived of liberty since August 11, 2022.
According to Crimean Solidarity, on November 3, 2020, Crimean Solidarity correspondents Abliamit Ziyadinov and Vilen Temeriyanov were detained near the building of the so-called Crimean garrison military court, where they came to cover the support action in connection with the sentencing of political prisoner Arsen Abuyir, Rustem Emiruseyinov and Eksender Abdulganiyev. Activist Erfan Bekirov, who came to the courthouse to support political prisoners, was detained together with the correspondents.
At that time, two administrative protocols were drawn up on Temeriyanov, allegedly for “violation by a participant of a public event of the established procedure for holding meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches or picketing” and “failure to comply with the rules of conduct during the introduction of the heightened alert regime,” although they did not violate anything.
Despite repeated attempts by the police to bring public journalist Vilen Temeriyanov to administrative responsibility, the so-called “court” in occupied Crimea closed the case against him “due to the lack of elements of a crime in his actions.” “The court” made the only correct decision in this situation — it stopped the proceedings in the case against Vilen Temeriyanov due to the lack of elements of a crime in his actions,” lawyer Server Cholakchyk said. According to him, the police officers who drew up an administrative protocol against the public journalist tried to present Temeriyanov as the organizer of a rally or mass event, “which was not actually the case.”
So, that time, he was lucky enough to avoid trouble. On November 4, 2020, the Central District “Court” of Simferopol recognized the illiterate detention protocols of two civilian journalists and a Crimean Tatar activist, drawn up with violations, as “inadmissible evidence,” after which Ziyadinov, Temeriyanov, and Bekirov were released.
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And so, as reported by Crimean Solidarity, in the occupied Crimea, public journalist Vilen Temeriyanov, who lived in the village of Vilne, Dzhankoi District, was forcibly taken out of his home by the police.
According to Temeriyanov‘s wife, “on December 28, 2020, at around 9 a.m., police officers forcibly put Vilen Temeriyanov in a police car and took him out of the house. They refused to produce the documents, saying that “everything will be told in court.” The citizen journalist was actually kidnapped from his home by unknown people. Later, lawyer Emil Kurbedinov contacted Vilen Temeriyanov, saying that he was going to a meeting with him to provide him with legal assistance.
The wife of the citizen journalist, Elmaz Temeriyanova, told Crimean Solidarity that her husband was detained when they were going to visit relatives in Krasnoperekopsk. Vilen and Elmaz Temeriyanov demanded the security officers show their documents, but their request was ignored.
“They said that “everything will be told in court” in Simferopol. They blocked it from two sides,” Elmaz Temeriyanova said. “All this happened in a rude way; he was shoved into the car, and when the driver was already getting into the car, I again asked to show the documents, but he did not pay attention to me, and they drove away.”
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Based on this fact, investigators of the Main Directorate of the National Police of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol opened criminal proceedings due to the illegal detention of civilian journalist Vilen Temeriyanov by Russian security forces in the Dzhankoi District of occupied Crimea, who is accused of allegedly illegally organizing a mass event. “It has been established that the law enforcement agencies of the occupying state, using physical force, illegally deprived a public journalist of his freedom in the Dzhankoi District of Crimean for allegedly organizing a mass event. The detainee was illegally taken to the police department of Simferopol. The investigators of the Main Directorate of the Police of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea qualified the actions of the occupation authorities under Section 2 of Article 146 (illegal deprivation of liberty) of the Penal Code of Ukraine. Procedural management is carried out by the prosecutor’s office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.”
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Crimean Solidarity initiative activist Lutfiye Zudiyeva reported that Russia is illegally detaining nine citizen journalists and activists of Crimean Solidarity – Server Mustafayev, Timur Ibragimov, Marlen Asanov, Seyran Saliyev, Remzi Bekirov, Ruslan Suleymanov, Osman Arifmemetov, Rustem Sheykhaliyev and Amet Suleymanov. She recalled that in 2014-2016, Russian security forces used aggressive forms of pressure on public activists and journalists, including beatings, kidnappings, torture, etc. Instead, since 2016, according to her, security forces have changed their approach and are using criminal or administrative legislation for pressure.
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Journalist Olha Gakh on the Chytomo website: “Vilen Temeriyanov met his future wife, Elmaz, in July 2007. Then, the man decided that it was time to find a wife and start a family. One day, Vilen asked his friend if he had a good girl to introduce him to.
A friend was happy to share his phone number. He said that he knows one family: very good and decent, and the girls there are very well-mannered. However, at the same time, Vilen was given another number. He placed them next to each other and selected Elmaz‘s phone. “I said that it will work out – it will work out. And that’s all. He called me, and we started talking,” the woman recalls. This often happens among the Crimean Tatars…
Soon, the boy met the girl’s parents. Elmaz talks about Vilen like this: “He was soft, modest, with a very calm character. He did not like profanity; he never quarreled. He had very good human qualities. I liked it. He asked me to marry him – and I agreed!”
The woman adds that in her married life, her husband always thanked her for everything. Elmaz especially emphasizes this feature. She says that no matter what she cooks for her husband, he likes everything. He is also generous, kind, and sensitive. The couple has three minor children: the eldest daughter is 13 years old, the middle one is 11, and the youngest son Khalid is 6. Elmaz says that the boy has a disability: at his age, he has already undergone three heart operations: “Vilen really wanted a son. And always dreamed of giving him the name Khalid. When a boy was born, that’s what he was called.”
The man was engaged in construction and electric gas welding. He has a third degree in this profession. But in 2019-2020, he became interested in journalism – and he began to engage in this business.
Vilen did not like what was happening in Crimea. The man began to attend court hearings in the cases of political prisoners and began to cover these events so that more people would learn about injustice on the temporarily occupied peninsula: “He always said that few people know the truth, so he tried to participate in various processes and inform people as much as possible.”
The occupiers began to persecute Vilen Temeriyanov for his journalistic activities since the beginning of his work. This happened more than once. The man was a correspondent for the websites Grani.ru and Crimean Solidarity.
On November 23, 2021, during the execution of an editorial task, when the man covered how the Crimean Tatars met the released lawyer Edem Semedliayev, he was detained by the occupation police of Crimea. Then Vilen was arrested for 14 days. And even earlier, on November 3, 2020, the citizen journalist was detained near the so-called Crimean garrison military court. At that time, he covered the politically motivated case of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Red Guard group.
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Lawyer Emil Kurbedinov says: On December 18, 2020, the Central District Court of Simferopol fined Vilen RUB 2,000: “The court decided that the gathering of more than 200 listeners, who gathered at the court in Simferopol on November 3, 2020, to hear the sentence against the Crimean Tatars, had signs of a “mass event.” And the actions of Vilen Temeriyanov fall under the signs of an offense provided for in Section 1 of Article 20.6.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. The decision was made without his presence, and he received the relevant notification only on January 3, 2021.”
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Lutfiye Zudiyeva, a human rights defender of Crimean Solidarity, says: “Vilen was also subjected to administrative harassment several times, administrative cases were initiated against him, he paid fines. In addition, he was also serving administrative arrest.” The Committee to Protect Journalists published a statement in defense of correspondent Vilen Temeriyanov. “The authorities should drop all charges against Vilen Temeriyanov, immediately release him, and stop the persecution of Crimean Tatar journalists,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement.
“Vilen inspired me and many of our colleagues by the fact that, despite the serious heart disease of his youngest child, Khalid, he found time to cover the situation with political prisoners in the media,” Lutfiye Zudiyeva emphasizes.
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Lawyer Emil Kurbedinov: “Vilen Temeriyanov has been engaged in citizen journalism since the end of 2019 and participated in the creation of media content on the page of the human rights movement Crimean Solidarity. He regularly filmed courts in politically motivated cases, worked in the courtroom, and hosted text broadcasts. His videos and photos were used by professional editors. In 2020, Vilen received a press card from the Grani.ru online publication.”
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