FSB calls Crimean Muslims for preventive talks

29.09.2015, 09:38
The Russian government and FSB Crimea interfere in the activities of Muslim religious communities. It was stated by the Crimean human rights group.

The Russian government and FSB Crimea interfere in the activities of Muslim religious communities. It was stated by the Crimean human rights group.

"FSB officers, according to witnesses, claimed that members of the Muslim community were to attend preventive talksat the FSB of Russia", goes the review of the human rights situation in the Crimea in July - August 2015.

The review was published by the Crimean field mission on human rights, Krym.Realiyi website reports.

Human rights activists told that Russian FSB officers arrived on August 14 in the mosque of the village of Ai-Vasyl (Vasylivka) in Yaltato install surveillance cameras as a counterterrorist measure.

“Installation of video surveillance was not the initiative of the local community, but that of theFSB. The legal grounds for such intervention by the FSB is some criminal suit against certainindividuals, but their status (that of a suspect) must be determined by the investigator’s decisionor the decision on the ban of religious organizations in connection with the activities prohibited by law. However, none of these grounds were confirmed, they onlyreferred to verbal instruction,” noted in the review.

“Thus, the video surveillance in the mosque is the intervention of the authorities and the FSB into religious worship, which violates freedom of conscience and religion,”the Crimean human rights group stresses.

Earlier, the head of MejlisRefatChubarov made a statement, claiming that the most brutal punitive policies towards the Crimean Tatar people that had been implemented in March 2014, had as its ultimate goal the complete suppression of the Crimean Tatars’ will and fight for their rights in their homeland.

According to Chubarov, abduction and murder of young Crimean Tatars, mass prosecutions and arrests of activists of the Crimean Tatar people, a ban on residence in Crimea for their national leaders, armed pogroms (assaults) and searches in mosques, harassment of Muslim believers are aimed at strengthening the Crimea atmosphere of total fear and despair.

On March 16, 2014, the so-called referendum on the status of the peninsula took place in Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, which resulted in the Crimea’s membership in the Russian federation. Neither Ukraine nor the European Union nor the US recognize the vote and believe that Russia annexed Crimea. Russia denies the fact of annexation, claiming it was the “restoration of historical justice.”