Rebecca Harms, a member of the Green Group in the European Parliament and an expert on Eastern Europe, has recently voiced her concerns over the human rights violations in Russian-annexed Crimea and supported one of the detained Crimean activists.
Harms on July 12 published on her website a letter from Server Mustafayev, a Crimean human rights activist, who has been held in detention since his arrest on May 21.
In the letter, Mustafayev pointed out that despite all the resolutions of international institutions, the repression on ethnic and religious grounds in the occupied Crimea continues – activists counted more than 70 arrested and more than 10 people killed in the Crimea, not counting dozens of missing persons.
Moreover, human rights defenders also face episodes of torture and intimidation aimed at encouraging cooperation with local security forces.
But Mustafayev is sure that he is on the right track.
“Me personally and the guys who are imprisoned in “Ekaterina’s jails,” do not regret the chosen way of non-violent fight for the rights of the Crimean Tatars, Muslims of the Crimea and other political prisoners,” Mustafayev said in his letter.
According to the activist, today more than 115 children are being raised without parents, left without care and love. But also mothers and women of dozens of political prisoners are under constant psychological and emotional pressure.
“It is clear that impunity, connected with political conjuncture both in Crimea and in Ukraine, inability from the injustice of repression, sowed thoughts of hopelessness among some of us. But young activists are full of energy. They are sure that the relief will come, and the lie will disappear,” wrote Mustafayev.
Supporting human rights defenders in Crimea, Harms also recalled FIFA ignoring Russia’s violation of human rights at the World Cup.
2018 FIFA World Cup has been taking place in Russia starting from June 14 and will end with the final match on July 15.
“In a democracy, respect of fundamental rights is not an option. By remaining silent FIFA is not only breaking its own rules, it is endorsing an authoritarian regime at the cost of the freedom of people like Server Mustafaiev,” Harms said.
“We cannot forget him and the other prisoners fighting this fight from a prison cell, refusing to be intimidated,” Harms also wrote on Facebook.
Previously Mustafayev was a coordinator of the Crimean Solidarity, an open contact group for human rights organized in 2016 in Sevastopol for families of political prisoners in Crimea, as well as abducted and missing Muslims.
The charges against him and another Crimean tatar Edem Smailov have been attached to Bakhchisaraian case of “Hizb ut-Tahrir,” a transnational Islamic religious-political organization which has a presence over 20 countries across the world.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is free to work in Ukraine and Europe, as well as in most countries, but it is banned in Russia since 2003 and was included to the terroristic list.
