Crimean Tatars: Umerov’s Psychiatric Internment Amounted to Torture According to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister
Ukranian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has released a statement declaring that Mejlis Deputy Chairman Ilmi Umerov’s placement in a psychiatric hospital in Russian illegally-occupied Crimea must be recognized as an act of torture by the International Community. A longstanding member of the Mejlis, Umerov’s sentence was in the line of the treatment of other notable members of the Crimean Tatar community who have suffered significant abuses since Russia’s illegal annexation of the peninsula in 2014.
The article below is published by Ukrinform
Putting Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Ilmi Umerov into a psychiatric hospital by the Russian-occupied forced must be recognized as a kind of torture, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has stated. “What has been done to Ilmi Umerov during three weeks is nothing else but a kind of torture. We’re working for the rest of the world to recognize this”, Foreign Minister Klimkin wrote on Twitter.
As a reminder, on September 7, Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of Crimean Tatars Ilmi Umerov was released from a psychiatric hospital in Russian-annexed Crimea. The politician says he is considered mentally sane and feels good.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) opened a criminal case against Umerov on charges of separatism using mass media, information and telecommunication network, including Internet. In particular, the Russian authorities detained Umerov for publicly speaking on Ukrainian TV channel ATR on March 19, 2016 about the need to return Crimea under Ukraine’s jurisdiction.
On August 18, 2016, the Russian authorities brought Umerov to Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 in the city of Simferopol, Crimea, where he was kept against his will.
Photo courtesy of Kyiv Post
