Human Rights

Prisoner of Conscience: Iryna Danylovych

Iryna Danylovych

Iryna Danylovych, an activist and citizen journalist based in occupied Crimea, was arrested in April 2022 on her way home after work and her house was searched. Her family said that they did not know her whereabouts for two weeks.

Later she was charged and in December, sentenced to seven years in prison and fined 50,000 rubles (around 500 euros) for allegedly handling explosives. Danylovych, who worked as both a nurse and a citizen journalist, exposing deficiencies in the healthcare sector for local publications, denied any wrongdoing and said that the explosives had been planted to incriminate her. Local and international human rights organizations say she has been persecuted because of her journalistic work.

After Danylovych appealed her sentence, in May 2023 the Supreme Court of Crimea reduced the sentence by only one month.

In July 2023, Danylovych was transferred to a detention center in Russia and then moved to a prison, her father told local media. Even though the citizen journalist suffered from an ear condition, Russian prison authorities denied her both medication and access to medical care. As a result, her health deteriorated, and she has declared a dry hunger strike.

In March 2023, the international media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, following reports of her ailing health, called for her to have immediate access to healthcare.

CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, Gulnoza Said, released a statement declaring that “Danylovych should not be in prison in the first place, and authorities should stop retaliating against Crimean journalists by depriving them of their basic rights”.

As of December 1, 2022, CPJ estimates that at least 19 journalists, including Danylovych, were behind bars in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea.

In the summer of 2023, several Ukrainian and international human rights organizations issued a joint statement to express their support for this activist and demand her release. 

“Iryna Danylovych is one of many whom authorities in Russia-occupied Crimea are targeting in their all-out campaign to crush critical, pro-Ukrainian voices,” said Gerald Staberock, Secretary General of the World Organization Against Torture. “Her imprisonment is an act of sheer reprisal for her peaceful civic work.”

Disclaimer:  As of December 1, 2023, Iryna Danylovych is still in custody, serving her sentence.

We feature select few prisoners of conscience out of the many in East and Southeast Europe. One political prisoner is one too many. 

Find out who the other political prisoners are #PrisonersofConscience  #FreeThemAll and in the special Focus on our website.