Crimean Tatar human rights defender Luftiye Zudieva (pictured) will be tried today in the Kyiv District Court of Simferopol for being tagged in a Facebook post by well-known activist and political emigrant from Russia, Tagir Minibaev. Minibaev’s post contained symbols banned in Russia, and now Zudieva, who was mentioned in it, is accused of demonstrating those symbols.
Zudieva herself is not surprised by such developments in Putin’s Russia, but she points out that the absurdity of such cases is compounded by the equally absurd methods used when law enforcement officials put on a show by detaining a woman for the amusement of the media. «I see such administrative detentions and cases as the first signs that will first go through the administrative process and then turn into serious criminal cases. This is an expected phenomenon. Unfortunately, I don’t see any other way for the situation in Crimea to develop. But it would be better if law enforcement officers did not arrest women in such a way. It’s unnecessary noise and provocation,» she says.
After her arrest, Zudieva was given a medical examination and her phone was confiscated. Her lawyer, another well-known Crimean Tatar human rights defender, Emil Kurbedinov, was not allowed to see her until after that. It should be noted that both Zudieva and Kurbedinov are individuals who have long been thorns in the side of Russian law enforcement in occupied Crimea, as they are among the few who continue to defend the remaining rights of Muslims that they had under Ukrainian rule.
At the same time, yesterday’s arrest of Zudieva and her colleague Mumine Saliyeva marks a shift by law enforcement to open pressure against women. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, represented by its head Pavel Klimkin, strongly condemned the repression against Muslim citizens and called on the international community to put pressure on the Kremlin.