The following have been invited to the event: Yurii Stets, Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine; Marie Yovanovitch, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USA to Ukraine; Refat Chubarov, Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people; Viktoriia Siumar, Chairwoman of the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Freedom of Speech and Information Policy; Mustafa Dzhemilev, Ukraine’s MP, President’s Commissioner for the Crimean Tatar people; Akhtem Seitablaiev, Ukrainian actor and film director, director of SE Crimean House; journalists, human rights and social activists.
As part of the event, a book by Mykola Semena, a prominent Ukrainian journalist who was illegally convicted in Russian-occupied Crimea, “A Crimean Report” (chronicles of the occupation of Crimea in 2014-2016), will be presented.
Organized by: the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine, State Enterprise ‘Crimean House’.
Address: Kyiv, 9 Mykhaila Omelianovycha-Pavlenka St.
Additional information.
Mykola Semena, Crimean journalist and columnist. In 1976, he graduated from Kyiv State University, Faculty of Journalism. Since 1982 he has lived and worked in Crimea.
For nearly fifty years in journalism, he made his way from a junior correspondent to an editor-in-chief and a contributor to leading publications, both Ukrainian (‘Day’, ‘Dzerkalo Tyzhnia’ (‘Mirror of the Week’)) and Russian (‘Izvestiia’ (‘News’)). He reported from the most remote Crimean villages and summits and wrote little features for regional press and large analytical articles for major newspapers. He also became a true master of photography and published several books.
A prominent figure of Crimean journalism, Honoured Journalist of Ukraine Mykola Semena is practically a criminal in Putin’s Russia, which occupied and annexed his native Crimea. On 19 April 2016, Russian security officers searched Semena’s house in Simferopol, subsequent to which they forfeited his equipment and data storages. The Russian authorities accused Semena of public calls for violating the territorial integrity of Russia in an article he published on the Crimea.Realities website in September 2015.
On 22 September 2017, the Zaliznychnyi district court in Simferopol sentenced Mykola Semena to two and a half years of conditional imprisonment with a trial period of two years and prohibited to hold public office.