MP Refat Chubarov of the Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc faction, chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, has said a new wave of unlawful arrests of Crimean Tatars has started in Russia-occupied Crimea as a means of vengeance by Russian occupiers for their support of the Ukrainian naval seamen taken prisoners of war by Russians near the Kerch Strait on November 25.
“On December 12, when crossing the administrative border between mainland Ukraine and the temporarily occupied Crimea, civil activist Edem Bikerov, 57, a citizen of Ukraine, residing in Novoaleksiyivka, Henichesk district, Kherson region, was illegitimately detained and then arrested. He suffers from a number of serious diseases: diabetes, he had a leg amputated some time ago, and this year he has undergone a complicated heart surgery. Russian occupiers have charged Bikerov with illegally acquiring and storing weapons and explosives. Only on December 18, a lawyer was admitted to him and it turned out that for the week of Eden’s arrest the doctor hadn’t visited him,” Chubarov said in his address to the Verkhovna Rada’s rostrum at the December 19 session.
He said he believes that the new wave of persecution of Crimean Tatars by the Russian invaders has been due to their support of the captured Ukrainian sailors: “This is a kind of revenge on the Crimean Tatars for their help to the captured Ukrainian seamen.”
