Occupants detained journalist and human rights activist Lutfiye Zudiyeva

In the occupied Dzhankoi, representatives of the so-called “Center E” illegally searched the house of Lutfiye Zudiyeva, a human rights activist of the Crimean Solidarity organization and journalist of the Ukrainian media Graty. She covered the trials of political prisoners and human rights violations in the occupied Crimea.

The occupation forces broke into Lutfiye’s house with a search warrant at about 6 am. Two hours later, another car without number plates drove up, from which masked security forces got out and also entered the house. Immediately, lawyer Emil Kurbedinov arrived in Dzhankoi, and relatives and neighbors gathered near Lutfiye’s house. But the occupation “police” closed the gate to the yard and started filming people. “Crimean Solidarity” reports that when the parents demanded to let them into the house of their son (Lutfiye’s husband), the occupation “officers” did not respond, pushed the elderly woman out and closed the gate when the activist’s mother-in-law tried to enter the yard.

Zudiyeva’s husband, Seitasan Chykiyev, commented: “I woke up from the stomping. Looking at the camera, I realized that it was law enforcement officers. Jumping over the fence, they opened the gate and entered the yard. They knocked loudly on the door. I asked them to wait for us to get dressed. They showed a ruling of the Kyiv District Court [of Simferopol] that they would conduct a “survey”. But in fact, there was a search. They rummaged everywhere, made us pull out things to examine them.”

The occupation forces seized the han rights activist’s video recorder, all phones, laptop and flash drives. Then they took Lutfiye to the “Center E” in Simferopol. Her lawyer also went there, and later commented that the grounds for the detention remained unknown. According to preliminary information, the occupiers accuse her of allegedly “abusing freedom of the media”. Later, Lutfiye was released, and the occupiers drew up administrative protocols, but there are courts ahead and a constant risk of another detention.

Lutfiya Zudiyeva has been repeatedly persecuted for her professional activities. In July 2023, the occupation forces detained her and fined her 12 thousand rubles on charges of “participating in a mass simultaneous stay of citizens in a public place for the purpose of further media coverage”. This is how the occupiers interpreted the fact that she came to Simferopol to cover the court hearing in the case of Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis Nariman Dzhelial and the Akhtemov brothers.

In 2022, her article “Act and Punishment. How Nariman Dzhelial’s case of sabotage in Crimea emerged from torture and fragments of phrases” was shortlisted for the Honor of the Profession award for Ukrainian journalism. On February 20, 2024, Newsweek published Lutfiye’s article “I Live in Crimea. I Go to Bed Fully Dressed Expecting Armed Men at Dawn”, where she talks about the crimes of the occupiers in Crimea and repressions, including pressure on the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, systematic searches in homes.

“I almost always go to bed dressed at my home in Crimea; the expectation that armed men will break into the room at dawn is ingrained in my mind and has changed my daily bedtime routine. You don’t just brush your teeth and go to bed, you make sure to charge your phone, your camera, your power bank. You can’t turn off your phone, even when you’re tired of it, or put it in “sleep mode” for the night, because at any moment there may be a message about another search or detention,” Lutfiye commented in the article.