Today, we are telling the story of Osman Arifmemetov, a Crimean Tatar, civic journalist, and activist who covered in the media the crimes of the occupiers in Crimea, illegally sentenced by Russians to 14 years in prison.
Life before the detention
Osman Arifmemetov was born on August 28th, 1985, in Uzbekistan, where Soviet servicemen illegally deported his family in 1944. In 1990, the family returned to Crimea, to the city of Bakhchysarai. After high school, Osman entered the Vernadsky Taurida National University, Faculty of Mathematics. At the university, he met Remzi Bekirov and Ruslan Suleimanov. All three became good friends and later neighbors. They were engaged in civic journalism after the Russian occupation, although they were not journalists by education.
From 2011 to 2015, Osman worked as a programmer and a math tutor, preparing children for exams and teaching them programming. Since 2015, he has been actively involved in covering illegal searches and trials in the occupational “courts” and helping to organize transfers to pre-trial detention centers for falsely convicted Crimean Tatars. Osman Arifmemetov and his wife Aliie have two children. Osman is one of the first civic journalists in Crimea.
What have the occupiers come up with?
On March 27th, 2019, the most massive searches of Crimean Tatars’ homes in recent years took place in Crimea, including Osman’s house. Illegal searches occurred in the villages of Kamianka, Strohanivka, and Bile. On that day, 20 Crimean Tatars were arrested and falsely accused of terrorism. The next day, the Russian occupiers detained three more Crimean Tatars and two more later. All 25 detainees are members of the so-called “second Simferopol group.”
The Russians arrested Osman Arifmemetov the next day in the Rostov region of the Russian Federation, where he had gone for several days to cover the “trials” of illegally detained Crimean political prisoners. The occupiers accused him of allegedly “organizing the activities of a terrorist organization and participating in the activities of this organization.”
As Osman himself later described in a letter and the story My Deportation (written in a detention center): “There was a whole line of security forces with weapons. They put their hands behind their backs, handcuffed the activists, and placed them in a minibus between rows of seats in a kneeling position with their foreheads on the floor. They drove us somewhere and beat us on the way when they stopped at a certain spot.“ Osman lost consciousness because of the beatings.
In November 2022, after years of torture and psychological pressure, Osman Arifmemetov was illegally sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Why was Osman Arifmemetov detained de facto?
Since October 2016, Osman has been filming illegal searches in the homes of Crimean Tatars. The first searches in his work were those of his fellow villagers, brothers Teimur and Uzeir Abdullaiev; Osman undoubtedly knew that they were not criminals or terrorists, as the occupiers claimed. In February 2017, he served five days of administrative detention along with nine other Crimean Tatars illegally detained in Kamianka, a suburb of Simferopol, for coming to support their neighbor Marlen Mustafaiev, whose house the Russian security forces searched. From morning until late afternoon, the detained Crimean Tatars were kept in the bus without food and water, without heating.
In 2017, Osman was broadcasting live, chasing a tinted minibus of the Russian special services in which security forces were taking away Bilial Adilov, a father of eight children who was abducted right from under the building of the occupation “court.” In the same year, the journalist filmed the consequences of a search in the house of Tymur Ibrahimov, where a ten-day-old child was staying during the illegal actions of the occupiers: the representatives of the Russian special services ransacked everything in search of religious literature.
Osman, like many other Crimean political prisoners, was arrested for allegedly “participating in a terrorist organization” when, in fact, he was covering the crimes of the Russian occupiers against Ukrainian citizens in occupied Crimea. In his letters from prison and speeches, the journalist noted: “Russia uses its anti-terrorist and anti-extremist legislation as a tool to combat dissent and active citizenship. During 30 years of living in Crimea, I have never seen a single terrorist attack, and I have never heard of terrorists until Russia came with its inhumane legislation and longing for the past.”
Where is Osman Arifmemetov now?
In April 2024, it was revealed that political prisoners from the “second Simferopol group,” including Osman Arifmemetov, were unlawfully moved from the Novocherkassk Detention Center in the Rostov region of the Russian Federation to various other detention facilities on March 18th. Only in early May 2024 did Osman’s whereabouts become known. The First Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Nariman Dzhelial, who was in Russian captivity at the time, said in a letter to his wife that Osman Arifmemetov had arrived at the Minusinsk prison in the Krasnoyarsk region of the Russian Federation.
Join the Letters to a Free Crimea initiative. Write a letter, tell your friends and colleagues about the campaign, and share the information on social media. These simple steps will help our fellow citizens feel that we continue to struggle for their freedom despite all the obstacles.
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The materials were created within the framework of the information campaign #10yearsofResistance in cooperation with the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine. The information campaign is part of the events dedicated to the Day of Resistance to the Occupation of Crimea.пільно з Міністерством з питань реінтеграції тимчасово окупованих територій України. Інформаційна кампанія є частиною заходів до Дня спротиву окупації Криму.