Fatma is a small, delicate woman of 30. On top of her traditional dress and hijab, a pair of trainers and a rucksack give her the look of a carefree young woman. But Fatma Ismailova is the mother of three children: Khadija, the oldest, is 9, Fatikh is 7 and Khalid is 5. And for the past three years, she’s been bringing her children on her own.
In October 2016, officers with Russia’s security service, the FSB, arrested Fatma’s husband Rustem Ismailov on terrorism charges after searching the family home in Crimea. In June this year, a Russian military court sentenced Rustem to 14 years of strict regime prison for “participating in the activities of a terrorist organisation”.
Fatma is one of many Crimean Tatar women who have lost husbands, brothers, sons and other relatives to the wave of counter-terrorism cases which have swept the peninsula since it was annexed by Russia in 2014. There are now more than 170 children living without their fathers, who are detained or convicted on terrorism charges. In some densely inhabited Crimean Tatar villages, there are entire streets without male relatives. This tidal wave of police harassment affects the whole of the Crimean Tatar community, and its effects will make themselves felt for a long time to come.
