Since Russia sent its troops into Crimea in late February 2014, a total of 43 local activists have been abducted in the Kremlin-occupied territory — apparently by the Russian authorities and their accomplices.
Eighteen of those who were abducted are still missing. Six of them have been found dead.
These are the findings of a new report presented on March 23 by Crimea SOS, a Ukrainian human rights advocacy group, which collected the data based on media reports, testimony from freed abduction victims, and the statements of relatives of the abducted people.
Since Russia considers Crimea part of its territory, activists want to use their findings to seek the help of international courts to address these human rights abuses.
The report is divided into two time periods.
One of the report’s authors, Maria Kvitsynskaya, told the Kyiv Post that the first period runs from February-June 2014, when the victims of the abductions consisted mainly of pro-Ukrainian activists who opposed the Russian annexation. During the second period, which runs from the autumn 2014, most of the abducted people were members of the Crimean Tatar community – the indigenous people of Crimea, most of whom oppose the Russian occupation.
Kidnappings of pro-Ukrainian activists
On March 9, 2014, Oleksandra Riazantseva, a costume designer and pro-Ukrainian activist, was heading to Crimea by car together with her friend. They were carrying with letters of support for Ukrainian soldiers who were blockaded inside their military bases by invading Russian troops.
At a checkpoint near the city of Armiansk, the two women were detained by armed pro-Russian men. The reason was that they had found a Ukrainian flag in the trunk of their car, and that Riazantseva had a tattoo on her arm in honor of the Heavenly Hundred, the EuroMaidan activists killed by the riot police in street protests in Kyiv.
The armed men threatened to chop off Riazantseva’s arm and cut off her hair. Her friend was clubbed with a rifle butt.
“It seems that they were having fun from what they were doing to us,” Riazantseva remembers.
The women were put in jail and were repeatedly interrogated by officers from Russia’s FSB security service. They were threatened with being sent to Russia.
Riazantseva believes that it was because the assaults and abduction were witnessed by people in cars passing by, and the news of their abduction soon ended up in the Ukrainian media, that they were released after only two days.
Riazantseva’s case is one of 23 abductions that occurred in Crimea by the summer of 2014, according to the report. Five of those who were abducted in this period are yet to be found.
“The purpose of these abductions was to cause panic and to threaten other activists,” said the report’s co-author, Eugenia Andreyuk.
Kidnappings of Crimean Tatars
From the autumn of 2014, abductions started to happen all over Crimea, and not only in the big cities and at checkpoints.
The target had changed as well: the victims were mostly people who were not politically active. Rather, 16 out of 20 of the people who were abducted were Crimean Tatars.
On Sept. 27, 2014, Isliam Dzhepparov, a teenager who was planning to enroll in a medical university, was abducted together with his cousin by unknown men in the village Sary-Su near the city of Bilogirsk in eastern Crimea.
The two men were forced into a car and driven away.
Later that day, a witness saw them on a highway 40 kilometers from Simferopol. A group of men in black uniform dragged the two young Crimean Tatar men into a Volkswagen minivan and drove them in the direction of the city of Feodosiya on the southern coast of eastern Crimea.
Dzhepparov’s father Abdureshyt is a former Soviet dissident and one of the leaders of Crimean Tatar movement.
Despite immediately reporting the abduction of his son and nephew to the Russian occupying authorities, the investigation turned up nothing. The two men remain missing to this day.
Andreyuk calls Dzhepparov’s case a typical one of abduction of Crimean Tatars.
“They are usually carried out by a group of about five people, who arrive by car and capture their victims,” she said.
“The main goal here is to create a feeling of insecurity, the feeling that anybody could be kidnapped if they pose a threat to the authorities.”
Two Crimean Tatars disappeared this March, and there are signs they were also abducted, Kvitsynskaya said.
FSB methods
The abductions in Crimea resemble abductions that took place in previous years in the Chechen Republic and other parts of the Russian North Caucasus, the report said.
Its authors found the clear signs that in at least 36 cases, the Russian occupying authorities were clearly involved in the abductions.
The report identified 10 Crimean and Russian officials and members of pro-Russian paramilitary units, who were involved in ordering the abductions.
They include Sergey Aksenov, the so-called Prime Minister of Russian-occupied Crimea and Igor Bezler, Russian security agent and one of the warlords who started Russia’s war on Ukraine in the Donbas in April 2014.
Simon Popuashvili from the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), a Brussels-based NGO that works to raise human rights concerns internationally, said that there clear signs of crimes against humanity and war crimes having been committed in Crimea.
Since Russia refuses to investigate these crimes, and Ukraine lacks the resources to do so, the countries of the European Union could instead launch their own investigations, Popuashvili said. He said European law allows the prosecution of such cases, regardless of where they happened.
Popuashvili said his organization is preparing to invite EU-based agencies to investigate the Crimean abductions. He said that these investigations could be conducted in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany or the Baltic states.
“This would allow there to be investigations that would discover the truth, and give the victims an opportunity to seek compensation,” he said.
