Lutfiye Zudiyeva, a prominent human rights activist and civic journalist in Russian-occupied Crimea, has been detained, prosecuted and fined for three Facebook posts which she personally had nothing to do with, but which somebody tagged her on when posting five years ago. The administrative prosecutions against Zudiyeva and another Crimean Solidarity activist, Mumine Salieva, were clearly only pretexts for repressive measures, but they do create some very dangerous precedents. As well as the clear escalation of repression against women activists, this is also the first time that an activist has been prosecuted merely for the fact that somebody else tagged them on Facebook. Of these three posts from 2014, only one of them, on 25.02.2014, tagged her after Russia’s annexation, the other two were when even Russia does not dispute that Crimea was under Ukrainian law (15 and 17 February 2014).
Russia's War Against Ukraine
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Halya Coynash: Russia prosecutes activist for being tagged on Facebook
Crimean Tatars flag waves at the ceremony commemorating the victims of the 1944 deportation of the indigenous people of Crimea, the Crimean Tatars, at Sofiivska Square in Kyiv on May 18, 2018.
