Over three and a half years of annexation in Crimea, there were about a hundred children left without fathers -? Missing or arrested by the Russian authorities. Together with adults, they experience searches, arrests of relatives, litigation, where they come to see their father or grandfather. They are assisted by the organization "Bizim Balalar", in the care of which there are already 66 suddenly grown-up kids. Every year, such children in the Crimea are becoming more and more.
Psychiatric clinic in Simferopol in the summer of 2016. A regime object, security is on duty at the entrance, you can see relatives only briefly and by the hour. Together with the patients in the wards are those who undergo a psychiatric examination for sanity in this way, writes Anton Naumlyuk for Radio Liberty. - A little girl comes to the lattice of the door, behind which stands her grandfather Ilmi Umerov. She slips her thin hands through the bars, hugs him and kisses her hand, where she managed to reach. "Why are you silent," Aunt Aisha tells her. - Say something". But the girl just smiles, is silent, hugs her grandfather and does not move away from the bars until the time for the meeting ends.
Ilmi Umerov, the former head of the Bakhchsarai district and deputy chairman of the Mejlis, banned in Russia, is accused of calling for separatism, for an interview with the Crimean-Tatar television channel ATR, where he talked about the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the need for international pressure to return the peninsula. "In fact, I want to restore the territorial integrity of both Russia and Ukraine," Umerov said in court. - I do not recognize a referendum that was conducted in violation of all international norms. I have no complaints about the borders of Russia in 1991. And what happened in 2014, I think is a violation of international law and, most importantly, the laws of Ukraine, which has been torn away the territory of the Crimea ". The court sent Umerov to a psychiatric clinic for compulsory examination. In the hospital Umerov spent three weeks, several times a day his relatives came to bring food. He refused to eat in the clinic, suspecting that he could be given psychotropic drugs. Together with adults, granddaughters came to the hospital.
After a forced examination, when Umerov regained the lost health in the clinic, he received guests who gathered in his house for Dua - collective prayer. Dua for Crimean Muslims were in fact the only way to get together to pray for the fate of Crimean Tatars arrested and missing in Crimea and pro-Ukrainian activists. In the courtyard of the house in Bakhchisarai stood rows of shops, on the wall hung a Crimean-Tatar flag. At the entrance of all met one of the small grandsons of Umerov, who offered water and juice, and when the prayer began, sat on the female half with all the prayers.
"Do you love your home?" - ask Umerova. Next to him, on the lawn, which is covered with protection from insects, especially so that children can play, his granddaughters run between the oil. "Yes, this house was designed by my wife, we love him very much," he says.. "Does your family feel safe?" - they again ask the owner. He is silent, then replies: "No. No one in the Crimea can feel safe ".
On May 31, the Kyiv District Court in Simferopol began to consider the case of Umerov, a preliminary meeting was held. The maximum period under Article 280. 1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, public appeals for separatism - five years. Lawyer Nikolai Polozov, who was taken out of the Umerov case by the FSB investigation, transferred to the status of a witness, does not doubt that the verdict will be prosecutorial, but he hopes that the term will be conditional. The first meeting was closed, granddaughters of Umerov were waiting for their grandfather at home. He is under a written undertaking not to leave the place and after the trial came home. Many other children of the Crimean Tatars are less lucky.
In the large case of the banned in Russia Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir in the Crimea are nineteen people. For the most part, these are traditional Muslims with large families who, after arrest, were left without a breadwinner. The first mass arrests took place in January 2015 in the Sevastopol region. Then the searches and arrests were in Yalta, Alushta, Bakhchisaray and Simferopol. One of the detainees in February 2016 was Crimean human rights activist Emir-Usain Kuku. According to the human rights activist, the FSB tried to recruit him, refused to cooperate, and after that came with a search. Early on the morning of February 11, security officials broke open the door of Cook's house, pushed him to the floor and searched him. Behind the scene observed a small son Bekir and daughter Safiy, who later told about what happened.
"Some black people came, they could hardly see their eyes. One of them was carrying a huge stick, similar to scrap, and others - some kind of incomprehensible machine guns, - recalled Bekir Kuku on his ninth birthday. - If Dad was here - we would have a small birthday celebrated, gifts would be bought. And he sits there, in the prison, among the fleas and ticks. How much he would like to return to see how his son turns nine years old ".
A few months after the arrest, a man came to Bekir's school, who waited for the boy after the lessons, stopped and began to say that his father was "a bad person and would sit very long if he did not cooperate". Subsequently, it turned out that the man acted at the request of an FSB officer, former SBU, Alexander Kompaneutsev.
Family and lawyer Alexander Popkov filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office and the FSB, but the siloviki reacted in a very peculiar way, accusing the Emir-Usain Kuku, who was in jail, of not fulfilling his parental responsibilities for "letting an unidentified man come to the child". The prosecutor's office initiated the inspection, the inspector for juvenile affairs demanded that the mother bring children to give explanations against her father, and when they refused to come, she began to watch at school to find her without a mother. Human rights activists stepped in for the family, Amnesty International demanded to stop the persecution of Kuku and his children. After that, no one tried to interrogate Bekir, but nothing is known about the results of the inspection.
"Children are afraid to go to school, and adults, - that people will come for children in masks and with automatic weapons," says lawyer Alexander Popkov.
Bekir, like other children of arrested Crimean Muslims and activists, is well versed in the course of the trial, knows what a "preventive measure" and "appeal". At each meeting, these children come to see their fathers: visits to jail families do not give. Often, they are not allowed to enter the courtroom, arguing that "the kind of father behind bars can affect a child's psyche". Together with adults, they stand in the corridor to see their father during the posting. Sometimes you manage to touch his hand. All these children saw searches, detentions also occurred in their eyes.
"Our children's childhood ended on February 11, in just a few minutes. For a man now Ilyas, "- says the wife of another arrested, Muslim Aliyev. Next to her there are four children, including a teenager Ilyas, who, after his father's arrest, stayed behind the "senior". In other families of children three, four. In the family of Enver Mamutov, who was arrested in Bakhchisarai, seven. His youngest daughter was detained for two months during the detention, her mother brought her to prolong her arrest to court to show her father from behind the bars. The daughter of the already convicted Rustem Vaitov Safiy was born after the arrest, like the daughter of Teymur Abdullayev, who was born nine days after the search and detention. In total, without fathers, since 2014 there have been about a hundred Crimean children, 66 of them monthly provided by the organization "Bizim Balalar" - "Our Children".
"Bizim Balalar" was established in May 2016 after mass arrests in Bakhchisaray, where four families were left without a father. The initiative was offered by the Crimean journalist Lilja Budzhurova, which was supported by many. The organization is not registered with the Ministry of Justice in order not to fall under the strict Russian legislation on public organizations, acts as an association for which transparency is monitored by the Council. Every month Budzhurov and Elzar Islyamov meet with the wives of arrested Crimean Muslims and activists, hand over funds to them for children. Unlike the organization "Crimean solidarity", which was created to help Crimean political prisoners and their families, "Bizim Balalar" purposefully emphasizes that it has nothing to do with politics and deals only with the needs of children. Every month for each child in the care of the organization is collected for five thousand rubles, by the beginning of the academic year - each for 12. The organization invites children's psychologists to practice. They help not only arrested Crimean Tatars, but also, for example, the children of the convicted director Oleg Sentsov and Reshat Ametov, an activist who was first killed for picketing against annexation in 2014. Every year, children are getting more and more on providing "Bizim Balalar". The children of Crimean political prisoners, mostly Crimean Tatars who are persecuted for pro-Ukrainian position or on religious grounds, know what searches and arrests are, they come together with adults to court hearings and also pray to Dua for their fathers, like everyone else. A few months ago, Crimean courts began to conduct trials over persons involved in the Hizb ut-Tahrir case in closed session, now no one is allowed in the room, except for lawyers. Children together with adults gather near the courthouse, but now they can not even catch a glimpse of the arrested relatives. They are facing the same problems that adults face: weekly searches by activists, trials and harassment. Crimean childhood in these children was very short.
At the time of annexation, there were 4800 orphans in the Crimea, by the end of 2016 there were less than 400 of them. According to Aksana Filipishina, representative of the Ukrainian Ombudsman for the Protection of Children's Rights, only a few dozen orphans could be taken to the mainland in three years, the rest were forcibly imposed Russian citizenship.
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