Ukraine/Russia: The nurse who stood up to injustice in Russian-occupied Crimea

“Freedom is my religion”. These are the words Iryna Danylovych has tattooed on the back of her neck, inspired by her favourite book: 1984 by George Orwell. It was after Russia occupied Crimea in 2014 that Iryna visited the tattoo artist, marking the start of her activism. Iryna headed up the Alliance of Medics, a trade union, and led the Facebook group, ‘Crimean Medicine without Cover’. She blogged, co-operated with the media, and highlighted corruption in Crimea under Russian occupation – especially the diversion of resources during the Covid pandemic, and the manipulation of statistics. She also assisted Crimean Tatars – a heavily persecuted minority (cases of Abdureshit Dzhepparov, Nariman Dzhelyal). Clearly, the Russian authorities noticed her citizen journalism as the nurse was abducted by FSB agents on her way back from work.

Iryna would have known what was coming. She may have been a medical professional, but she was also a citizen journalist, and human rights activist with knowledge of the many cases of forced abductions by the FSB, followed by torture and imprisonment on trumped up charges. Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, most people in this Ukrainian region have grown afraid of speaking their minds freely in public. An atmosphere of fear ensures most stay silent out of dread and paranoia.

Abduction and interrogation

On Friday, 29 April 2022, a car pulled up at Iryna’s bus stop with three men inside. One waved some kind of ID at Iryna, and insisted she comes with them, ‘for a chat’. She was forcibly taken and pushed inside the car. Iryna asked to see the arrest warrant. “Shut up… if you want to live,” she was told. As the car approached the FSB’s headquarters in Crimea’s capital, Simferopol, one of the men pulled a bag over her head. She was handcuffed. This was how Iryna Danylovych entered the building. Her family, friends, and colleagues would know nothing about her whereabouts for 13 long days.

In detention in a basement room, the FSB officers wanted Iryna Danylovych to give them information about independent journalists in Crimea. She was accused of cooperating with the security services of other countries. When she asked to phone her parents so they wouldn’t worry, they told her she should be worrying about getting out alive from this basement instead.

She would go on to be held captive for almost two weeks there, beaten and subjected to repeated intimidation. She did not break. Finally, on 6 May 2023, they asked her to sign some blank pieces of paper if she wanted to live. Fabricated charges would be laid against her that she had – unbelievably - hidden explosives within her spectacle case in her bag.

Trial and conviction

Nearly two weeks after she was abducted, Iryna Danylovych’s whereabouts finally became known to her lawyer and loved ones. But it was not until she was brought in front of a judge at the end of August 2022, that her family were able to see her for the first time. It was a shock, as it was clear to everyone that Iryna’s health had suffered.

When she bravely addressed the court for the last time, Iryna spoke of how she feared that after her abduction, she would become another victim of enforced disappearance in occupied Crimea. Still, this was a woman who was a thorn in the side of the Russian authorities. On 28 December 2022, Iryna Danylovych was convicted and sentenced to 7 years in prison, reduced by a derisory one month after she appealed in June 2023.

Health alert and family support

Iryna Danylovych did not give up. She remained defiant, going on a hunger strike to stop her ill-treatment, and appealing her conviction. Meanwhile, her health continued to deteriorate. She fell ill with an ear infection that caused an excruciating inflammation (media otitis), dizziness and headaches, which could have been easily cured with the right medication. Instead of proper medical treatment, she was advised to “Cut [her] wrists and back off” by the pre-detention centre doctor.

Her family, friends, and colleagues all expressed worry about her physical and mental health. Her father, the retired economist Bronislav Danylovych, stood determinedly on a street in Crimea in broad daylight, struggling for breath from an as-yet-undiagnosed liver cancer and with his face haggard from worry, to tell a local video journalist about the severely deteriorating health of his daughter. His deep love for his daughter gave him the courage to speak out, a remarkable act of bravery considering the context.

Following her appeal, Iryna was transported far from Crimea to Zelenokumsk in Russia, another form of punishment for the nurse. She is incarcerated in Penal Colony #7. Now deaf in one ear, she has still not received effective medical care. In 2024, Bronislav Danylovych passed away, his demise undoubtedly hastened by constant worry about the fate of his daughter. She was not given permission to attend his funeral.

Iryna Danylovych has joined the dozens of political prisoners from occupied Crimea who are held unjustly, and far from home, by the Russian State.

Please, join us in calling for the release of Iryna Danylovych.