meeting with a Ukrainian resistance fighter who spent three years in Russian jails

Arrested in September 2021, this political activist from the Tatar minority was convicted and imprisoned by the Russians. It testifies to the repression which “continues to increase”.

He is one of the Ukrainian figures of resistance to the Russian occupation in Crimea and his name is Nariman Djelyal. Since 2014, Moscow has illegally occupied this peninsula located in southern Ukraine. This journalist and political activist from the Tatar minority led the fight there, which earned him three years in prison in Russia. While he was released this summer during a prisoner exchange, franceinfo was able to meet him in kyiv.

He was not surprised this morning of September 4, 2021, when Russian police officers burst into his family home in Crimea. “I suspected they would end up arresting me one day”he confides.
With a bag on his head and blindfolded, Nariman Djelyal is taken to the offices of the Russian intelligence services. “The interrogation began. Still handcuffed, with a bag over my head. Without a lawyer, even though I had asked for one”he continues.

While in police custody, the Russians reproached him for his positions against the Russian occupation of Crimea, but he was sent to court for acts of sabotage on a gas pipeline and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. “I told my wife, who was in the court room: ‘Above all, don’t cry, don’t give them this gift, we’ll get through this, I’ll come home eventually’”relates Nariman.

In prison, he decided to continue the fight, he told us. “I wrote a lot. It was a way of protecting myself. What you have inside, you put it on paper. It frees your mind from bad thoughts”he says. For him, it was notably a question of holding out against the physical and psychological violence of the Russian guards. “We were forced to learn and sing the Russian anthem.”

After three years in prison, Nariman Djelyal was released last June following a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. Today, the activist is a refugee in kyiv, but it is impossible for him to return to Crimea.

“The Russians have always repressed all freedoms and all protest ideas in Crimea. But since the start of the war and until now, this repression continues to increase.”

Nariman Djelyal

at franceinfo

Crimea has been occupied by Russia for ten years, to the point that here in Ukraine, part of the population had come to accept the situation. Until the outbreak of war two and a half years ago and the birth of a strong patriotic feeling in the country. “Many people are now convinced that Crimea should not be abandoned”supports Nariman Djelyal, who refuses to let go of the political prisoners locked up in Russia. According to the activist, there are more than 200 currently in Russian jails.