Russia uses surreal charges and crippling fines to silence veteran Crimean Tatar newspaper

The third administrative prosecution this year has been initiated against the Crimean Tatar newspaper Qirim, with the aim clearly to crush one of the few independent and truthful media remaining after more than ten years of Russian occupation.  The charge could not be more cynical, with the publication accused of ‘abusing freedom of mass information” that Russia has all but eliminated in occupied Crimea.  It was earlier accused of such ‘abuse’ through its publication of excerpts from a UN report on human rights violations under Russian occupation, with the pretext chosen this time even more absurd.

Qirim first began publishing, as a solely Crimean Tatar language newspaper, in the final two years of the Soviet era, as Crimean Tatars were finally able to return to their homeland after the 1944 Deportation and decades of forced exile. In independent Ukraine, Qirim had a print run of around four thousand copies, with the paper sold, and its editorial office financed, solely by subscription.  It is doubtless because of this that the occupation regime have now focused on manufacturing insane administrative prosecutions and prohibitive fines against the newspaper itself,  co-founder and employee Seiran Ibragimov and the newspaper’s Chief Editor 68-year-old Bekir Mamutov.

The new prosecution was first reported on 27 September by Crimean Process which monitors ‘court’ proceedings in occupied Crimea, and noticed the details posted on the website of the occupation ‘Simferopol district court’.  The ‘hearing’ into this latest prosecution, the third in the last six months, is scheduled for 16 October. 

These charges would be comical were the fines churned out by occupation ‘courts’ not so high and the real aim behind them so sinister.  On this occasion, Qirim is accused of ‘abusing freedom of mass information, under Article 13.15 of Russia’s code of administrative offences, through a biographical note of Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the veteran human rights activist and founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Human Rights Group in 1989.  The biography mentioned that Alexeyeva had worked at the end of the 1970s for Radio Svoboda (Radio Liberty, now RFE/RL) and Voice of America.  This was when Russia was part of the Soviet Union and decades before the current Russian regime in 2012 began using draconian ‘foreign agent’ legislation as a means of stifling free speech and added Radio Svoboda and Voice of America to its ever-mounting number of so-called ‘foreign agents’.  Despite this being evidently anachronistic, the occupation regime has claimed that the biography should have contained a footnote stating that Radio Svoboda and Voice of America have been labelled ‘foreign agents’.

Judging by the previous ‘convictions’, a huge fine is near guaranteed.

As reported, Russian occupation ‘police’ burst into the homes of Bekir Mamutov and Seiran Ibragimov early on 17 May 2024.  Searches were carried out there, and at the Qirim editorial office.   Two charges were initiated by V. Koreninksy from Russia’s notorious ‘Centre for countering extremism’ against both Mamutov and Qirim. 

The first of these was under Article 20.3.3 of Russia’s Code of administrative offences, one of four repressive criminal and administrative charges rushed into Russian legislation within ten days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  It was claimed that Mamutov, through one of his articles, “circulated information aimed at discrediting the use of the Russian Federation’s armed forces to defend the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, to support international peace and security as part of the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”. In short, Mamutov was charged with not supporting Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, what it euphemistically calls its ‘special military operation’.  Mamutov’s article explained why Crimeans should not take part in this supposed ‘special operation’ on Ukrainian territory. 

The second charge was under Article 13.15 of the same code, i.e. the so-called ‘abuse of freedom of mass information’, and was, quite literally, over Mamutov’s publication in Qirim of an excerpt from a United Nations report on the human rights situation in occupied Crimea, citing cases of torture and abductions.  The excerpt was about Russia’s unwarranted detentions and beating of people on occupied territory and cited the torture of a Crimean Tatar in Kherson (while under Russian occupation) and the harsh conditions of SIZO No. 2, one of the remand prisons which Russia has opened in Crimea since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.   It was claimed that this article “circulated inaccurate information under the guise of facts, which posed the danger of harm to the life and health of citizens, property, the threat of mass infringement of public order and public safety”.

Bekir Mamutov was prosecuted back in April 2021 under this same article over publication of a UN report which mentioned Russia’s persecution of the Mejlis, or self-governing body, of the Crimean Tatar people.  Although ‘convicted’ then, the occupation regime had clearly not yet set about crushing Qirim and the fine was quite small.

The objective in 2024 is clearly very different, and all of the above prosecutions have resulted in occupation ‘courts’ finding the newspaper, Mamutov or Ibragimov ‘guilty’ and imposing prohibitive fines.

At the beginning of June 2024, ‘judge’ Anton Tsykurenko from the occupation ‘Kievsky district court’ in Simferopol imposed a massive 300 thousand rouble fine on Qirim over the article explaining why Crimean Tatars should not take part in Russia’s war against Ukraine.  The ‘judge’ concurred that this had ‘discredited the use of the Russian Federation’s armed forces’, etc., under Article 20.3.3 of Russia’s administrative code.  On 18 June, Bekir Mamutov was fined 110 thousand roubles over the same article, and on the same charge, by ‘judge’ Yanina Okhota.

In July 2024, , an occupation ‘magistrate’, Aleksandr Pyatnikovsky, found Bekir Mamutov guilty of ‘abusing freedom of mass information’ over the excerpt from a UN report about cases of torture and abduction in occupied Crimea, and fined him 130 thousand roubles. 

Then in August, ‘magistrate’ Sergei Moskalenko convicted Seiran Ibragimov of the same ‘abuse’, with respect to the same UN report excerpt, and imposed a fine of 250 thousand roubles.

These fines are crippling, with the aim clearly to force the newspaper to cease publication.