Russian riot police raid Crimean Tatar TV channel

[Blue_Tires]

Source: Agence France-Presse via Yahoo

Moscow (AFP) - Masked Russian riot police on Monday raided the office of a television channel serving Crimean Tatars, a minority ethnic group in Crimea that opposed Moscow's seizure of the peninsula from Ukraine last year. In a move the Organization for Security and Cooperation slammed as "intrusion" against the freedom of the media, dozens of armed masked men searched the headquarters of the ATR channel in the regional centre Simferopol, seizing servers and other equipments.

"This is the first such raid," deputy general director of the channel, Lilya Budzhurova, told AFP.

Budzhurova, who also reports for Agence France-Presse, said police and investigators had left in the afternoon, taking "a significant portion of our video archive" with them. The Moscow-based Investigative Committee said the raid was to probe the deaths of two activists after a rally in February last year outside the local legislative assembly. The rally involved thousands of Crimean Tatars as well as pro-Russian activists, the committee said, adding that the channel had video footage that can help the investigation.

Nearly half of Crimean Tatars, a Muslim people native to the Black Sea peninsula, were wiped out when they were accused by Stalin of collaborating with Nazi Germany and deported to Central Asia in 1944. Survivors and descendants were only able to return to their lands in the 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Most of the 300,000-strong group oppose Russian rule over Crimea and boycotted a disputed referendum last March in which voters, most of them from the Russian-speaking majority, were officially reported to have chosen to split from Ukraine.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-riot-police-raid-crimean-tatar-tv-channel-203912481.html;_ylt=AwrBJSB2tsZU_wkAtMvQtDMD

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Remember boys and girls: When the Russians want information from a news outlet, there's no warrants, no subpoenas, no court injunctions, etc...They just show up with guns and take whatever they want, Honey Badger-style...

Anybody out there want to try and defend *this* one?

EDIT: For those who can't read between the lines, this raid has nothing to do with probing a couple of stampede deaths; this is to identify and hunt down Tartar activists using the video footage

[hobbit709]

1. I'm sure our resident Putinistas can't wait to tell us it's all right.

[iandhr]

3. Beat me to it

[ColesCountyDem]

2. But... but... but...

Russia and Comrade Major Vladimir good, Ukraine fascist and bad! Lather, rinse, repeat....

[Tarheel_Dem]

4. And Victoria Nuland's cookies made Putin invade Crimea.

[ColesCountyDem]

5. Ssssshhhhhhhhh-- no one's supposed to know about that!

[Duckhunter935]

6. Just protecting the Crimean Tartars

from the evil NATO-fascist-Nazi-Zombies. Those magic cookies do that you know.



I am sure the Putin people will be here any minute to explain this as soon as RT gives them their instructions.

[Xolodno]

7. As expected...

Thread turned into trashing "Putinistas"

Have an honest discussion about:

1. Territory doesn't really belong to either Russia or Ukraine and the Tatar nation should be restored....Nope.

2. Discuss how the peninsula is a strategic area for Russia and Krushev's "gifting" it to Ukraine may not have been legal in the first place? Nope.

3. Discuss about how Ukraine used Crimea and the Russian lease's as leverage that sooner or later would provoke Russia...Nope.

4. Discuss how during the early part of this crisis the US and EU seemed willing to give the area away to Russia and still don't hear of any serious discussion of it becoming part of Ukraine? Nope.

5. Discuss how the sanctions seem to be doing the opposite of changing Russia's position and may actually force Russia into doing a full out invasion of Ukraine? Nope.

6. Discuss the lives lost, hardships, etc. due to the high power checkers game USA and Russia are playing? Nope.

Nah...gotta have trash Putin and have some schadenfreude at the Russian economy and read posts that borderline championing the return of a cold war. Romney would be proud.

[7962]

9. And Khrushchev would be proud of your points. nt

[Xolodno]

11. You demonstrated my points perfectly. EOM.

[newthinking]

12. Just do a search on Crimea, Tatar, and Jihad

The situation with Crimean Tatars is always told with only part of the story.

There was a building extremist movement there well before the annexation. There have been calls for Jihad and people connecting with Al-Qaida.

Certainly fear drives both the US and Russia (and the world) away from normal police processes and definitely there are abuses, but the way it is painted is dishonest and does nothing but move us closer to potential conflict due to ignorance. We flat out don't have the information to understand fully this event especially given the information war.

I know mentioning reason busts up a nice rant of anger. Sorry for adding something not mentioned in your stories.


Crimean Tatars Threaten Terrorism After Russian Takeover


"Guy Chazan, writing for the Financial Times, reports:

“We have Islamists, Wahhabis, Salafis?.?.?.?groups who have fought [with the opposition] in Syria,” [Jemilev] said in an interview in Simferopol, the Crimean capital. “They say: ‘an enemy has entered our land and we are ready’.

“We can’t stop people who want to die with honour,” he said, making he clear he did not endorse a jihadist campaign.

Tatars make up an estimated 12% of the population of Crimea. During the Soviet Union, Tatars were brutally oppressed and were forcefully sent to Central Asia on crowded trains without provisions on the pretext that they had collaborated with the Nazis.

The new Crimean parliament has already voted unanimously to join Russia and a popular referendum on the issue is scheduled for March 16.

Any possible jihad in Crimea would only further complicate the Ukrainian crisis while further internationalizing the conflict. An ongoing Islamic separatist conflict in the Caucasus against Russia was the paramount security concern during the Sochi Olympics, and the insurgency there is often a major training ground for jihadists in other conflicts.

A number of Crimean Tatars have formed connections with the global jihadist network, having fought alongside rebels against Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

There is already chatter on jihadi internet forums and social media as to whether Russia's invasion of Crimea legitimizes it as a new militant front."

http://www.businessinsider.com/crimean-tatars-threaten-terrorism-2014-3

[Blue_Tires]

14. Thanks for proving my point

(whoever the hell you are)

[PoliticalPothead]

8. Those silly Russians. Always trying to do things the hard way.

Haven't they learned from the U.S. that it's much easier to just bomb media outlets you disagree with?

Erlanger also quoted a surviving journalist who said that "Everything crashed. There was no way out. There was smoke everywhere. It was terrible. People were screaming. It was like a nightmare." Another reported a "huge detonation, and everything went completely dark." The scene, Erlanger reported, "was an increasingly familiar one of smashed glass, broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional devastation."

These last quotes, however -- as independent journalist David Peterson reminds us -- are not from January 2015. Rather, they are from a report by Erlanger on April 24 1999, which received far less attention. Erlanger was reporting on the NATO "missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters" that "knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air," killing 16 journalists.

"NATO and American officials defended the attack," Erlanger reported, "as an effort to undermine the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia." Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told a briefing in Washington that "Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic's murder machine as his military is," hence a legitimate target of attack.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/19/opinion/charlie-hebdo-noam-chomsky/index.html

[friendly_iconoclast]

10. Your tu quoque doesn't make this any more acceptable

[Blue_Tires]

13. The funny part is how deep somebody had to look to dig that up that one incident

while you can find a hundred incidents (kidnappings, imprisonment, murder) from Russia in the past five years alone...

Good example of 'what-aboutism', but you're not exactly balancing the scale, are you?