Edem Semedliaev
Edem Semedliaev is a human rights defender and lawyer. Since the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, he has been actively involved in legally representing and defending the rights of the Crimean Tatars, who have become one of the major targets for the authorities, alongside civil society activists and journalists.
The Foreign Agent Law introduced in 2012, together with the so-called ‘law on undesirable organisations’ introduced in 2015, characterises human rights advocacy as ‘a political activity’ and labels human rights organisations as ‘foreign agents’ with all the relevant implications. This includes arbitrary and frequent inspections along with the possibility to be stopped from working on the pretext of ‘undesirability’; allegations of allegiance to foreign interests and of posing a threat to constitutional rule, national defence capacity, or national security. Many human rights organisations which refused to be labelled as ‘foreign agents’ have been forced to stop their activities in the country.
