BACK IN THE USSR: Crimean Tatar Activist To Be Forced To Psychiatric Clinic For Test.

A court in Russia-annexed Crimea has ruled that a noted Crimean Tatar activist, Ilmi Umerov, must be placed in a psychiatric clinic for examination.

The Kyiv District Court in Simferopol on August 11 approved the motion by investigators. Umerov’s lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, said that the court’s ruling will be appealed.

Umerov, 59, former deputy chairman of Crimean Tatars’ self-governing body — the Mejlis — was charged with separatism in May after he made public statements against the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea by Russia.

The Soviet Union was notorious, among many reasons, for committing dissidents to “psychiatric” prisons after diagnosing them with the mental illness of opposing Moscow.