61 Activists Killed Under Russian Occupation in Crimea, 29 Crimean Tatars

At least 61 activists have been killed during the occupation of Crimea, 29 of whom were representatives of the Crimean Tatar people.

According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, after the occupation of Crimea in 2014, the lives of Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians and all residents of the peninsula who do not support Russia have changed radically.

"The Russian occupation authorities have actually turned Crimea into a zone of repression and fear," the statement reads.

Activists and ordinary citizens, according to the CTRC, are forced to keep silent through trumped-up cases, arrests and abductions. In Russian detention centers, people are tortured with electric shocks, suffocated with bags and beaten to extract "confessions" to crimes they did not commit.

"People are punished even for posts in social networks or blue and yellow nails, and any disagreement with the occupation authorities is equated with 'extremism, '" the CTRC notes.

The Crimean Tatar Resource Center has recorded at least

• 398 political prisoners and those persecuted in criminal "cases", 241 of them are representatives of the Crimean Tatar people.
• 61 dead, 29 of whom were representatives of the Crimean Tatar people.
• 25 victims of enforced disappearances, 18 of whom were representatives of the Crimean Tatar people.

In total, in 2017-2024, 10,018 violations of fundamental human rights were recorded in the occupied Crimea, 6,730 of which were against members of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people. And unfortunately, the numbers are only growing, and the fates of hundreds of people are behind them.

"Occupation is not just political control, it is a systematic destruction of rights and freedoms ," the Center emphasizes.

Thus, the Kremlin's prisoner, Crimean human rights activist and citizen journalist Irina Danilovich is being held in terrible conditions in a penal colony in the Stavropol Territory of the Russian Federation. Danilovich and other prisoners are forced to endure the abuse of convoy guards, drink water with a dead animal flavor (due to the corpses of animals in the water supply system), are forced to stand for hours in the rain and cold, and are deprived of food and proper medical care. The colony's premises are also full of rats and cockroaches.

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