Crimea Occupation: 3-Year-Old Child Died because of Persecution of His Father

The death of 3-year-old Musa Suleymanov, the son of a Crimean political prisoner, journalist Ruslan Suleymanov, is the liability of the occupation authorities, including so-called judges, prosecutors and investigators involved in the activist’s arrest. The Crimean-Tatar Resource Center published such a statement.

The appeal says that the tragedy happened because the boy remained without full parental care.

“It is these individuals who fight with freedom of speech and belief, with religious and political beliefs in the occupied territories, with the rights of the indigenous Crimean-Tatar people in Crimea, who did everything possible to leave Musa Suleymanov without full parental care and attention. These officials have created all the conditions for the death of an innocent child by their inhumane acts of political persecution and racial discrimination organizing against the Crimean-Tatar people,” the statement said.

The text specifies the judges and investigators who were engaged directly in the Suleymanov persecution and his unjust conviction.

Crimean-Tatar advocates call on the international community to increase the pressure on Russian Federation to stop political persecution in Crimea and to introduce personal sanctions against persons involved in human rights violations in Crimea, in particular, to all the persons “definitely involved in the tragic death of Musa Suleymanov.”

To recap, three-year-old Musa Suleymanov disappeared on Friday, 24 July, in the village of Stroganovka of the Simferopol area. He was last seen in a sandbox near his house. The search for the child, which involved more than 3,600 people, took two days. On Sunday, 26 July, the boy’s body was found in a drain hole near the house. According to media reports, the pit was covered with a wooden pallet and bricks. A coordinator of one of the search teams told journalists that this place had been checked three times.

Crimean “servicemen” note that, “the autopsy results found no signs of violent death. The child death cause was drowning.”

Meanwhile, Crimean Tatar Majlis considers it necessary to attract experts to establish real causes and circumstances that led to the death of the 3-year-old boy.

Bohdan Marusyak