‍The occupation authorities in Crimea have drawn up the third protocol in the last six months against the editorial staff of the Crimean Tatar newspaper Qırım. Why the journalists are being persecuted? What does this mean for them in the future? Why Russian security forces are so annoyed by a newspaper with a circulation of less than a thousand copies?

The Qırım newspaper first came to the attention of the occupation's punitive system in 2021. The reason was the published report of the United Nations Secretary-General on the human rights situation in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. In his speech, Antonio Guterres mentioned several times the ban on the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and the persecution of its members. And since the Mejlis was recognized by a Russian court as an “extremist organization”, its mention in the Russian information field is allowed only with the label “recognized as an extremist organization and banned”. 

In court, the editor of the publication, Bekir Mamutov, argued that this requirement had been met - there was an asterisk next to the word “Mejlis” and a footnote below it with information about “ban”. However, the court decided that the number of asterisks was not enough, and the labeling requirements were not fully met. The editor was found guilty of misusing information and fined five thousand rubles (about two thousand hryvnias or fifty euros). Three years later, he was searched again because of the publication of a report by the United Nations Secretary-General.

This time, the report was devoted to the humanitarian situation in Crimea in 2022-2023. The representative of the international organization reported cases of enforced disappearances and illegal detentions on the peninsula, as well as beatings and torture used by Russian security forces against detainees to obtain the necessary testimony. He also called the conditions in which prisoners are kept in SIZO-2 (pre-trial detention center) inhuman and degrading.

Russian fighters against extremism were so outraged by the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about abductions and torture that they sent a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs “on the Republic of Crimea” and received a response that there had been no statements or reports “about the use of torture and ill-treatment of citizens by law enforcement agencies in the period from 2017 to the present.” Having compared the data of the internationally recognized organization and the obscure entity with the police functions in the occupied territory, the Crimean court decided that the latter deserved to be trusted. 

“The information disseminated by “Editorial Office Krym” LLC under the guise of being reliable is untrue, was not obtained from an official source, and was deliberately unreliable for the person who published it,” said ‘magistrate judge’ Serhiy Moskalenko in his ruling. Last time, the UN was very surprised that their report was questioned and used as a pretext to persecute independent media. Now Guterres will have a new experience when he learns that he is an “unofficial source”.

In addition to exposing the “fake news” about torture and abductions in Crimea, which for some reason is being discussed on all international platforms, the independent editorial board was also accused of discrediting the “second army of the world.” Last year, one of the representatives of the Qurultay of the Crimean Tatar people, Ali Ozenbash, wrote an article called “Does a person have the right to defend himself against artificially forced death?” The text was devoted to the forced mobilization of Crimean Tatars into the ranks of the Russian army, and Ozenbash also explicitly recommended that Crimean Tatars avoid participating in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine. 

The hearings in this case were held without the presence of the audience. However, in the published court rulings, there is no indication that the judges tried to establish whether the phrases in the text had a negative meaning, or whether these statements were aimed at undermining the credibility and authority of the “invincible” Russian army. Both the editor and the newspaper itself, as a legal entity, were found guilty without long deliberations. 

But the most weird was the third case against Crimean Tatar journalists. As the Crimean Process organization has learned, the newspaper is now being accused of not marking the publications of organizations recognized as “foreign agents”. The text found by the censors concerned the biography of the famous Soviet human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseyeva. The author deemed it necessary to mention that in the late 1970s, she collaborated with Radio Liberty and Voice of America. 

The Roskomnadzor saw these actions as a violation of freedom of information because nowadays both structures in which Alekseyeva worked fifty years ago are “foreign agents” in the Russian legal field and should always be mentioned only with the note that these structures are recognized as foreign agents. Not always, but only when it comes to reprinting their information or describing their activities. Nevertheless, the text refers to Alekseyeva, but it is unlikely that the court will understand such nuances. 

For the above “offenses”, the courts have already issued four fines of a rather sensitive amount to the editor and the legal entity. In total, they amount to 790 thousand rubles (about three hundred thousand hryvnias or eight thousand euros). This is the entire media budget for several years. There are still two more trials to come on the episode with human rights activist Alekseyeva, and there is every chance that the total amount of fines will be a million or more. 

However, the key risk is not even fines. Repeated “abuses” of freedom of information are a good reason to initiate the procedure of deregistration of a media outlet as a legal entity. So far, there have been no such precedents in Crimea. But there were also no independent media outlets that managed to register after the occupation and retain the courage to publish UN reports on torture and abductions. That is why the Russian security forces have systematically attacked the editorial office - despite its small circulation, Qırım remains a symbol of independence and freedom of information. The occupiers see such symbols as a real threat and spare no effort in fighting them.