Crimean court continues attack on Crimea Fund and Mejlis

A court in Simferopol on Monday, Sept 29, refused to unfreeze the assets and bank accounts of the NGO Crimea Fund and allowed the prosecutor’s application to remove Mustafa Dzhemiliev from the list of the Fund’s founders.

According to the head of the Fund, Riza Shevkiyev, the court ignored the documents he presented which demonstrate that the Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemiliev has not had founder status since 2002.  Instead it decided that Dzhemiliev’s presence at a conference of the Fund’s assembly was sufficient.

Shevkiyev says that he has no idea how to ‘exclude’ Mustafa Dzhemiliev and will be consulting with lawyers.  Until this is done, the Fund’s assets remain frozen and its work largely paralyzed.  This, doubtless, is what is intended. 

As reported, Russia’s foreign ministry has tried to justify the actions taken against the Mejlis or representative-executive body of the Crimean Tatar people and the Crimea Fund by mentioning Mustafa Dzhemiliev’s involvement.  The foreign minister called him a ‘foreign national’ and noted that his presence or residence in the Russian Federation [including occupied Crimea] had been deemed ‘undesirable’.

The Mejlis building in Simferopol which is owned by the Crimea Fund was surrounded on Sept 16 by armed men while FSB officers carried out a 12-hour-search of the entire building.  The next day bailiffs turned up and ordered the Crimea Fund, Mejlis and the editorial offices of the Avdet newspaper to vacate the building within 24 hours (see Crimean Tatar Mejlis given 24 hours to leave).