PART 3 THE AFTERMATHS OF THE OCCUPATION: A POLITICAL REPRESSIONS SYSTEM 3.5. Repressions Against the Crimean Tatar People as a Systemic Organized Opposition to the Occupation Regime “Simply put, the occupation authorities currently prohibit the right of the Crimean Tatars to speak with their voice. Due to the fact that today the occupation authorities are disposing of Mejlis, which is an elected by the Crimean Tatars national authority in accordance with the international law, some experts said that Russia is preparing for worse actions towards the Crimean Tatars”. Refat Chubarov, Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars24 Crimean Tatars are a systematically organized community with their own self-gov- ernment bodies having regional nuclei all over Crimea. They openly sabotaged both the quasi-referendum on March 16, 2014, and the illegal elections on September 14, 2014. To overcome the non-violent resistance, the occupation authorities launched a campaign to build the image of the ‘enemy from within’ and to prosecute Crimean Tatars using both legal and extra-legal mechanisms. “With the arrival of Russia to Crimea, the repressions against the Crime- an Tatars started ... The repressions against the Crimean Tatars with an active pro-Ukrainian position never ended since March 2014. These repressions are manifested in the form of abductions and murders of activists, mass raids, arrests, and fines for participation in protests. In this way, due to the repressions, about 10,000 out of 300,000 of the (Crimean Tatar, – author) population were forced to leave the territo- ry of Crimea and are in the mainland Ukraine as of today,” (February 2015, – author), says one of the coordinators of the Committee on the Rights of the Crimean Tatar people and a member of the Mejlis, Abmedzhit Suleymanov. Following are the examples of individual cases of repressions against the Crimean Tatar people giving a general idea of the diversity of the methods used and the con- scious choice by the occupation authorities of such illegal policies: • Illegal bans on entry to the territory of Crimea of the leaders and activists of the Crimean Tatar people (including Mustafa Dzhemilev, Refat Chubarov, Sinaver Kadyrov, Ismet Yuksel etc.); 24 http://censor.net.ua/n374710 48