A meeting of relatives of illegally imprisoned Ukrainian citizens and Latin American journalists was held at the Mission. For this purpose, the sister of Bohdan Ziza, Oleksandra Barkova, and the brother of Lenia Umerova, Aziz Umerov, visited the Office of the Crimean Platform.

The foreign delegation included Andrea Moletto Rodriguez, a well-known journalist and talk show host in Chile, Joaquin Sanchez Marinho, an international journalist from Argentina, Juanita Leon Garcia, a prominent Colombian journalist, writer and founder of the news site La Silla Vacía, as well as Yadier Luna Garcia, a journalist of Confidential and Esta Semana.

The meeting took place as part of a 7-day visit of well-known and influential journalists in their respective countries to Ukraine, or to immerse them in the most important topics that can help the audience of the global south better understand the nature of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The Permanent Representative Tamila Tasheva thanked the audience for their interest in the occupied Crimea, spoke about the work of the Mission and introduced the foreign guests to the relatives of the Crimean political prisoners.

Aziz Umerov familiarized the journalists with the story of his sister Leniye in detail: “She is a 25-year-old civilian girl, a communicator for a women’s clothing brand. Because of her father’s cancer, she went to the occupied Crimea, traveling through 4 countries. Out of 50 people on the bus, she was the only one with a Ukrainian passport, which led to a scrutiny. She spent the last 5 months in illegal detention while the occupiers were falsifying evidence and the criminal case against my sister.”

Aleksandra Barkova told the guests that on June 6, the Russian court plans to pass an illegal sentence on Bohdan Ziza: “For more than a year now, my brother has been in detention, which began with beatings and torture, and he was deported to Russia. He is being punished under four criminal articles for the paint colors he chose. Bohdan’s action is not only the most prominent protest in the occupied Crimea, but also a struggle for justice. For 8 years he was face to face with the occupation, but he did not succumb to Russian propaganda and did not betray his country.”

Tamila Tasheva shared with the journalists information about the torture the occupiers use against our citizens: “Suffocation, electric shocks… Everything is the same as the Soviet government used. After such torture, you will not only record a ‘video apology’ but also confess to anything. But all Bohdan did was say that he loved and supported Ukraine.”

Maria Tomak, Head of the Crimean Platform’s Support Service, spoke about the new prosecutions that began after the full-scale invasion began – for Ukrainian songs and anti-war comments, defacing Putin banners, etc. She emphasized that this war is decolonial for Ukraine: “The so-called “Russian world” is a total militarization and colonization. At least for the occupied Crimea it looks like this.”

“We are talking about all this because our citizens live there, protesting the occupation in various ways, waiting for liberation, waiting for Ukraine. This is a war for survival, so that Ukraine, as a nation in particular, can exist. If you want to forget about Crimea, it means that you support Russia’s criminal colonization policy,” the Permanent Representative emphasized.

The guests from Latin America asked a lot of questions, in particular about the history of the Ukrainian peninsula, Russian citizens who illegally moved to Crimea during the occupation, and were interested in the issue of property rights in connection with the huge number of illegal immigrants from Russia on the peninsula.

The Mission is sincerely grateful to the Public Interest Journalism Laboratory, which organized this visit of prominent journalists and opinion leaders from the Global South.