Kateryna Kalytko became public ambassador of imprisoned journalist Osman Arifmemetov

Poet, translator, board member of PEN Ukraine Kateryna Kalytko became public ambassador of Osman Arifmemetov within the #SolidarityWords campaign. Before, his ambassador was Victoria Amelina, writer and member of PEN Ukraine.

Osman Arifmemetov is a Crimean Tatar civic journalist and activist of the Crimean Solidarity movement. He used to be a math teacher but had begun to cover illegal actions of the Russian occupation ‘authorities’, especially persecutions and repressions against Crimean Tatars, since the beginning of Russian occupation of Crimea.

On March 28, 2019, Osman Arifmemetov was detained by Russian security forces. Prior to that, the occupation ‘authorities’ arrested 20 Crimean Tatars and accused them of terrorism; later, 4 more people had been arrested as well. All the 25 Crimean Muslim detainees now form the second group of Simferopol defendants in the Hizb ut-Tahrir case.

On December 13, 2019, political prisoner Arifmemetov won the second literary contest Qirim Inciri in the special nomination "The Freedom of Speech". Apart from that, his short story My Deportation which depicts his transfer from a detention center in Simferopol to the Rostov-on-Don prison was shortlisted for the award in the nomination "Ukrainian Language Prose About Crimea".

On November 24, 2022, the occupation ‘authorities’ sentenced Osman Arifmemetov to 14 years in penal colony.

Arifmemetov’s wife and two small children are waiting for his release.

Kateryna Kalytko is a Ukrainian poet, translator, author of poetry and short prose collections, member of PEN Ukraine, 2023 laureate of the Shevchenko Prize in literature for her book The Order of the Silent ("Орден мовчальниць").

Before, Victoria Amelina, another Ukrainian writer, documentor of war crimes, was the public ambassador of Osman Arifmemetov. On July 1, 2023, Victoria died in hospital after getting injured in the Russian missile attack against Kramatorsk on June 27, 2023.

#SolidarityWords is a joint project of PEN Ukraine and  the Human Rights Centre ZMINA. Within it, renowned Ukrainian writers and journalists became ambassadors of Ukrainian political prisoners imprisoned in the Russian Federation and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.

Ambassadors call upon the release of political prisoners and spread the word about their cases in interviews, publications, and during public events in Ukraine and abroad. This solidarity campaign is aimed at drawing attention to the cases of Ukrainian hostages of the Kremlin and promoting international pressure on Russia to facilitate their release.