Question: Who are these people? What do they have in common?

The one on the top right is a Crimean Tatar “land” activist Danial Ametov, who was, a few days ago, beaten up by five prison guards in a jail at Herson region of Ukraine, because of his beard. Yes, it is true! He was beaten up by five prison guards who unexpectedly showed up in Ametov’s jail cell in a February evening of 2011, and asked him to cut his beard. When he refused to cut his beard, he was attacked by the prison guards with batons and rods and badly beaten. After the torturous beating, the guards cut his beard and placed barely conscious Ametov under solitary confinement.

Now, let us look at the other photos. The one on the left is the well-known Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. He is the author of Anna Karenina, Last Station (made into a movie in 2010) and many other literary works. He is well- respected and loved all over the world, as well as in Ukraine. He also has a beard.
The bottom center is the photo of famous Soviet/Russian novelist and dramatist Alexander Soljenitsin, who had a Ukrainian mother. This bearded author/historian is the author of world famous literary works, such as, The Gulag Archipelago, The First Circle, Cancer Ward, and many others. Yet no one even mentions his beard!

Daniyal Ametov is a Crimean Tatar. He lives in Simferopol, where I took his picture of him at his house during my State Department sponsored IREX IARO research grant in 2006. Ametov, a soft spoken man, heads an organization called Avdet, one of the many associations that planned and executed several land squatting protests throughout Crimea within the past years. In 2010, he was sentenced to jail for four years. The reasoning behind his incarceration was not transparent. Consequently, Ametov was removed from his homeland territory of Crimea and transferred to another jail in Kherson region (Labor colony #105, Daryevka village, Kherson oblast) of Ukraine, where he has no support system.

Ametov’s beard differs from Soljenitsin’s and Tolstoy’s. His beard is ethnically and religiously defined. He is a Crimean Tatar. A Muslim, who believes that growing a beard, is one of the requirements (fard) of his Islamic faith.
The Ukrainian constitution article 35 guarantees freedom of religion. Beard is included in this freedom, as an expression of religion. Therefore, this jail-beating of a Crimean Tatar prisoner in an Ukrainian jail because of his beard, for one, is unconstitutional based on the Ukrainian constitution.

How can a helpless man be beaten by five prison guards for his beard in his jail cell? Does this mean that tomorrow Christians of Ukraine will be beaten by the police because of the crosses they wear around their neck? How about the Jews of Ukraine who wear Star of David as a symbol of their religious faith?
I thought that Ukraine I know and conduct research in since 2002 respected religions. Every year when I visit Crimea with different academic grants, I see Hare Krishnas dancing at airports or parks in Sevastopol, I talk to Jehova’s Witnesses walking around the cities. In Crimea, I see churches, synagogues, and mosques next to one another. Is this just a façade presented to Western visitors, including OSCE, or does religious freedom really exist in Ukraine?

I wonder if these five prison guards will be punished for their unjust behavior by their superiors now that this news of this event spread outside of Ukraine? I wonder if Crimean Tatars in Crimea will reconcile their differences and condemn what happened to Daniyal Ametov in his jail cell? When an event like this takes place, if people do not unite regardless of their political and ideological differences, then the battles cannot be won and people would continue to live in an environment where bickering about the Other is the most practiced activity.
I for one, as a US citizen and a US scholar whose work was supported by numerous academic grants and who conducted research in Crimea since 2002, and the current President of the International Committee for Crimea, condemn this inhumane action of collective beating of a helpless prisoner in a Ukrainian prison (Herson region).

I condemn the religious profiling based on a beard, which is against the Ukrainian Constitution, Article 35.
I invite Crimean Tatar Diaspora as well as everybody who opposes human rights violations wherever it is to protest and condemn this event. I invite Human Rights organizations and conflict monitoring organizations, such as OSCE HCNM, to protest and investigate this ugly event.
Ukraine is aiming to be a part of the European Union. However, against the backdrop of these types of human rights violations, I wonder if it will pass the civilization test and be allowed to enter the European Union.

Sincerely,
Dr. Idil P. Izmirli
President of International Committee for Crimea

Ottawa – Liberal M.P. Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre) welcomed to Canada the legendary human rights figure and Chairman of the Mejlis (Parliament) of the Crimean Tatar People Mustafa Dzhemiliev. Wrzesnewskyj paid tribute to the Dzhemiliev who is also a member of Ukraine’s Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) and a recipient of the UN Nansen Prize recognizing his outstanding contribution to the cause of refugees. Dzhemiliev led the return of the Crimean Tatar people from Central Asia to their ancestral homeland in Crimea during the 1990s. Speaking on the floor of the House of Commons, Wrzesnewskyj stated:

HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATES • STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2010 • 3RD SESSION • 40TH PARLIAMENT • VOLUME 145 • NUMBER 113
MUSTAFA DZHEMILIEV

Mr. Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, in the past this House has hosted legendary figures who have distinguished themselves in the battle for human rights. Today, Mustafa Dzhemiliev is here in Ottawa. At the age of 6 months he and his family and the entire 200,000 Crimean Tatar people were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral land and deported en mass to Central Asia by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Forty percent of their population died.
As a young man speaking out for the rights of his people to preserve their culture and language, and their right to return to their ancestral home, Mr. Dzhemiliev spent 18 brutal years in the Soviet gulag. In the 1990s he led the return of his people to Crimea and today is Chairman of the Mejlis (Parliament) of the Crimean Tatar People.
His harrowing personal story and that of the Crimean Tatars is an inspirational triumph of the human spirit over evil. On behalf of the House of Commons, I welcome Mr. Dzhemiliev to Canada to share with us his vision of peace for his people and for Crimea.
“It was extremely moving to witness the spontaneous outpouring of respect for Mr. Dzhemiliev when Members of Parliament from all parties rose in unison to give a prolonged standing ovation in his honour following my statement. This gesture by Members of the House of Commons speaks to the high regard with which Mr. Dzhemiliev is held,” stated Wrzesnewskyj.

MP Wrzesnewskyj first meet Mr. Dzhemiliev in August 2010 when he traveled to Simferopol, Crimea. At that time he extended an invitation to Mr. Dzhemiliev to come to Canada. Wrzesnewskyj arranged Dzhemiliev’s visit to Canada and his meetings in Ottawa and Toronto. While in Ottawa Dzhemiliev held meetings with: the Speaker of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Official Opposition Critic for Foreign Affairs, Official Opposition Critic for Aborignal Affairs, members of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, members of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Group, a number of Ambassadors from the diplomatic corps stationed in Ottawa, and senior Ukrainian Canadian Congress officials.
Following the Ottawa portion of his trip, Dzhemiliev travelled to Toronto where he gave an address at the KUMF Gallery on the geopolitical situation of Crimea, particularly as the potential location of the next post-Soviet conflict and as a guarantor of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
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For further information: Borys Wrzesnewskyj, MP (613) 947-5000
Attached photographs: 1) with the Speaker of the House of Commons, left to right: Arsen Zhumadilov (Assistant to Mr. Dzhemiliev), Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Mustafa Dzhemiliev , House of Commons Speaker Honourable Peter Milliken, MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, and Rustem Umerov (Mr. Dzhemiliev’s Assistant for Economic Affairs) from December 7, 2010; and, 2) MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj welcoming Chairman Mustafa Dzhemiliev at the beginning of his Ottawa visit (December 6, 2010).

MUSTAFA DZHEMILIEV
Mr. Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, in the past this House has hosted legendary figures who have distinguished themselves in the battle for human rights. Today, Mustafa Dzhemiliev is here in Ottawa. At the age of 6 months he and his family and the entire 200,000 Crimean Tatar people were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral land and deported en mass to Central Asia by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Forty percent of their population died.
As a young man speaking out for the rights of his people to preserve their culture and language, and their right to return to their ancestral home, Mr. Dzhemiliev spent 18 brutal years in the Soviet gulag. In the 1990s he led the return of his people to Crimea and today is Chairman of the Mejlis (Parliament) of the Crimean Tatar People.
His harrowing personal story and that of the Crimean Tatars is an inspirational triumph of the human spirit over evil. On behalf of the House of Commons, I welcome Mr. Dzhemiliev to Canada to share with us his vision of peace for his people and for Crimea.

Liberal MPs hold meeting with Mustafa Dzhemiliev in Ottawa

Ottawa – Last week Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre) hosted a meeting of human rights champion, former political prisoner during Soviet times, Ukrainian parliamentarian and Chairman of the Mejlis (Parliament) of the Crimean Tatar People Mustafa Dzhemiliev with Liberal MPs Honourable Bob Rae (Official Opposition Critic for Foreign Affairs), Todd Russell (Official Opposition Critic for Aboriginal Affairs), Glen Pearson (Official Critic for International Cooperation), and Dr. Bernard Patry (Vice Chair, Foreign Affairs Committee).

During the meeting on Parliament Hill, Dzhemiliev discussed the Crimean Tatar people’s challenges in preserving their national identity and language, as well as geopolitical, economic, employment, and religious issues in the region.

Commenting on his meeting with Dzhemiliev, Official Opposition Critic Bob Rae stated, “Mustafa Dzhemiliev’s contribution to his people and to all the people of Ukraine has been outstanding, and the struggle for equality for the Crimean Tatar people is one the world needs to support.”

During the meeting, Mr. Dzhemiliev briefed the MPs on efforts undertaken by the Crimean Tatars to preserve their culture and language, and their journey from internal exile during Soviet times back to their ancestral homeland during the 1990s.

“Mr. Dzhemiliev’s story is one of inspiration and perseverance. The quest for justice and equality for the Tatar people of Crimea requires the support of nations like Canada and others in the international community,” stated MP Todd Russell, Official Opposition Critic for Aboriginal Affairs.

“Having worked on human rights and development projects in Sudan in the 1990s, I very much admire the perseverance against great odds shown by Mr. Dzhemiliev in his efforts to preserve the cultural heritage and a living space for the Crimean Tatar people,” said MP Glen Pearson, Official Opposition Critic for International Cooperation.

In his comments at the conclusion of the meeting MP Dr. Bernard Patry, Vice Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, thanked Mr. Dzhemiliev for “traveling to Ottawa to share his personal story, the experiences of the Crimean Tatars, as well as briefing Members of Parliament on the geopolitical situation and political state of affairs in that part of the world.”

The Chairman of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis came to Canada at the invitation of MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj who personally arranged Mr. Dzhemiliev’s travel to Canada and organized his various meetings in Ottawa and Toronto.

“This past summer, I had the honour of meeting this legendary human rights activist. His heroic efforts to bring the Tatars back to Crimea came up directly against the impenetrable wall of Soviet brutality. At that time we discussed the rights of the indigenous Crimean Tatars, the upsurge and dangers of Russian chauvinism which was fanning separatism in Crimea, and the menace to peaceful co-existence in the region that this threatened,” said Wrzesnewskyj.

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For further information: Borys Wrzesnewskyj, MP (613) 947-5000

Attached photographs: 1) Liberal Members of Parliament meeting with the Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Mustafa Dzhemiliev on December 7, 2010, left to right: Rustem Umerov (Mr. Dzhemiliev’s Assistant for Economic Affairs), MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, MP Honourable Bob Rae (Official Opposition Critic for Foreign Affairs), MP Todd Russell (Official Opposition Critic for Aboriginal Affairs), Chairman Mustafa Dzhemiliev, MP Glen Pearson (Official Critic for International Cooperation), MP Dr. Bernard Patry (Vice Chair, Foreign Affairs Committee), and Arsen Zhumadilov (Assistant to Mr. Dzhemiliev); and 2) Liberal Members of Parliament engaging Chairman Mustafa Dzhemiliev in discussion during the meeting of December 7, 2010.

Member of Parliament – Etobicoke Centre News Release • News Release

 For immediate release

August 11, 2010
Wrzesnewskyj meets with Head of the Mejlis of
Crimean Tatars Mustafa Dzemiliev

Ottawa – Yesterday, Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre) met in Simferopol, Crimea, with the revered figure among Crimean Tatars Mustafa Dzemiliev, Chairman of the Mejlis (parliament) of the Crimean Tatar People, Ukrainian Member of Parliament, former political prisoner who served 18 years in Soviet gulag camps, and recipient of the UN Nansen Prize for championing the cause of human rights.
“It was a great personal honour for me as a Canadian parliamentarian to meet the legendary human rights activist Mustafa Dzemiliev. His heroic efforts to bring the Tatars back to the Crimea came up directly against the impenetrable wall of Soviet brutality. During our meeting we discussed the rights of the indigenous Crimean Tatars, the worrisome upsurge and perils of Russian chauvinism which is fanning the flames of separatism in Crimea, and which poses a significant threat to peaceful co-existence in the region,” said Wrzesnewskyj.

Dzemiliev was repeatedly arrested and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for his views and activities during Soviet times. While Dzemiliev was a political prisoner, Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident and later Czech President, and Andrey Sakharov, the nuclear physicist turned dissident, spoke out in defence of the Crimean Tatar figure. Through his policies, the national movement of Crimean Tatars has preserved its democratic policies of peaceful co-existence within Ukraine.
“As the founder of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Group, and having personally seen and experienced the death and destruction of civil war, including in Georgia, in 1994, I thought it was important for me as a Canadian parliamentarian to show solidarity with the Tatars of Crimea by meeting with Mr. Dzemiliev. This is especially timely considering the disturbing signs of increased activities by Russian secret security forces on the Crimean peninsula fanning the flames of chauvinism, hatred and the alleged arming and training of militias (“cossack formations”) in the region. Concurrently, this month Crimea has seen the high profile media visits by Russian Prime Minister Putin, Moscow Patriarch Kirill and other high ranking Russian authorities. As a proponent of human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, non-violence and democracy, Mustafa Dzemiliev, and the authority with which he speaks on behalf of Crimean Tatars, is seen as a bulwark against those proposing chauvinism, extremism and violence. As recently as August of last year, senior advisor to the Russian Embassy in Ukraine Vladimir Lysenko, was expelled by the former Ukrainian presidential administration for his clandestine work in an alleged plot to assassinate Dzemiliev,” stated Wrzesnewskyj.
Attached: Photograph of the Chair of the Mejlis of Crimean Tatars Mustafa Dzemiliev (left) and M.P. Borys Wrzesnewskyj (right).
 

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For further information: Borys Wrzesnewskyj, M.P. (613) 947-5000

The False Charges of Treason against the Crimean Tatars

The German Wehrmacht (regular armed forces) rapidly advanced against the disintegrating

Red Army following its invasion of the USSR on 22 June 1941.   In late October the 11th

German Army under General Manstein conquered most of the Crimean peninsula. During

World War II the Crimean peninsula came under German occupation for almost three

years.  The Soviet military did not recapture the territory until  April 1944.  The native

Crimean Tatar  population responded in a variety of ways to this occupation. Many

remained loyal to the Soviet regime, serving in the Red Army, assisting partisan units and

otherwise opposing the Nazi regime. A number of Crimean Tatars, however, served in

German organized self-defense units to fight against Soviet partisans. German records

show the number of Crimean Tatars  to serve in German formed battalions  reached 9,225

men.

1  This number constitutes considerably less than 1% of the more than 1.3 million

Soviet citizens to serve with the Germans during World War II. The vast majority of these men, over one million, came from the core Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian nationalities of the Soviet Union.

2 Despite the fact that Russians and Ukrainians formed the majority of

Nazi collaborators in the USSR, the Stalin regime did not subject these nationalities to

collective punishment.   The Soviet government, however, did justify its deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population in the USSR from their ancestral homeland  to Uzbekistan and the Urals by reference to the alleged activities of Crimean Tatar self-defense battalions organized under the Germans.

The decision to deport the Crimean Tatars from their homeland to Uzbekistan came very

shortly after the Red Army reoccupied the peninsula.  The German occupation of Crimea

had not been over for a full month yet when Stalin signed GKO Order 5859 on 11 May 1944 ordering the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population to Uzbekistan.

3  Like earlier deportations from the Caucasus it appears that the Soviet leadership first decided to use the cover of war to ethnically cleanse the Crimean Tatars from their homeland and then formulated the false charges of treason as a justification for this crime.

4 On 22 April 1944,

Serov and Kobulov5  sent a message to Beria claiming that 20,000 Crimean Tatars had                                                             

1 Document reproduced in T.S. Kulbaev and A. Iu. Khegai, Deportatsiia (Almaty: Deneker, 2000), pp. 206-207.

2 V.A. Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov Sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe

Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005), p. 65.

3 Document reproduced in S.U. Alieva, ed., Tak eto bylo: Natsional’nye repressi v SSSR, 1919-1953 gody

(Moscow: Insan, 1993), vol. 3, pp. 62-64.

4 For a clear example of how this was done regarding the Balkars deported on 8-9 March 1944 see D.M. Ediev,

Demograficheskie poteri deportirovannykh narodov SSSR (Stavropol’: StGAU “AGRUS”, 2003), pp. 26-27.

5 Ivan Serov and Bogdan Kobulov both held the position of Deputy People’s Commissar of the NKVD at this

time. This made them the second highest ranking men in the organization after Beria. 2  

deserted from the 51st Army as it retreated from Crimea in 1941. They provide no evidence for how they arrived at this figure. Indeed it appears that they merely took the total number of Crimean Tatars serving in the Red Army at the time and arbitrarily and

retroactively declared them deserters.  In fact Kobulov and Serov claimed  that the total

number of Crimean Tatars conscripted into the Red Army was 20,000 out of a total of

90,000 men inducted from the territory. Thus Kobulov and Serov asserted that every single Crimean Tatar without exception conscripted into the Red Army had deserted. This same report, however, notes that Crimean Tatars constituted only 218,000 out of the 1,126,800 people in Crimea in April 1940.

6 Thus  according  to  Kobulov  and  Serov’s  own  figures

Crimean Tatars represented 22% of all conscripts from the Crimean ASSR despite making up only 19% of the population. The claim that all 20,000 of them deserted is pure fantasy.

The number of actual cases of desertion and shirking of military service verified by the

NKVD’s Section for the Struggle Against Banditism for the years 1941-1944 in the Crimean ASSR by all nationalities is only 479 out of a total of 1,666,891 for the USSR as a whole.

7 The report by Serov and Kobulov, however, served as the basis for a later report by Beria to Stalin.

On 10 May 1944 Beria sent a letter to Stalin advocating the deportation of the entire

Crimean Tatar population from their ancestral homeland to special settlements in

Uzbekistan.    This document repeated the accusation by Serov and Kobulov that 20,000

Crimean Tatars had deserted from the Red Army. Beria, however, added a few additional

key alterations to the original charges made by his underlings. His report states that "From sections of the Red Army in 1944 deserted more than 20 thousand Tatars who betrayed the Motherland, and went over to serve the Germans with arms in their hands and fought against the Red Army..."

8  The figure of 20,000 appears to have come directly from the report sent to him by Serov and Kobulov. Beria embellished  their claim by accusing not only 20,000 Crimean Tatars of deserting the Red Army, but  also asserting  that all 20,000 without exception  later fought with the Germans against the Soviet Union. However,  the date of 1944 appears odd, either it is a typographical error and Beria meant to write 1941 or Beria deliberately altered it to make the alleged crimes of the Crimean Tatars  appear more recent and the need for deportation a more pressing matter.  The 20,000 figure used by Serov, Kobulov and Beria in their preparatory work for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in April  and May  1944, disappears from later

communications and decrees regarding the operation.    Indeed the actual deportation

decree itself does not make any attempts to quantify the alleged number to have deserted

from the Red Army or fought in German organized units. Instead it only speaks of “many

Crimean Tatars” engaging in such activities.

9  In fact the claim of 20,000 Crimean Tatar deserters and collaborators was never published during the existence of the USSR.                                                             

6 N.F. Bugai, ed., Iosif Stalin – Lavrentiiu Berii: “Ikh nado deportirovat’”: dokumenty, fakty, kommnentarii, (Moscow: Druzhba narodov, 1992), doc. 2, p. 131.

7 Bugai 1992, p. 286.

8 Document reproduced in N.F. Bugai, ed., “Deportatsiia: Beriia dokladyvaet Stalinu..,” Kommunist, no. 1, 1991, p. 107.

9 Document reproduced in Alieva 1993, vol. 3, pp. 62-64. 3 existed solely in the internal memos written by Serov, Kobulov and Beria during April and May 1944. The fact that it disappears from further correspondence after Beria’s message on 10 May 1944 suggests that Stalin himself found the flights of fantasy by Beria’s circle to be an embarrassment. 

The arguments of mass desertion and treason made  by Serov, Kobulov and Beria had  a

deductive rather than an inductive character. They seem to have concluded first that the

Crimean Tatars needed to be deported and then used the standard argument of mass

treason to justify this decision.  The earlier deportations of the Russian-Germans,

Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars had all been justified with similar

arguments. The deportation of the Volga Germans established a precedent in 1941 that the proper justification for punishing an entire nationality was to charge them with mass

treason. The Soviet government repeated this pattern in 1943 and 1944 with the

deportation of the Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Crimean Tatars.

Indeed the decrees ordering the deportation of these nationalities used  almost identical

wording.  In two cases, the Chechens and Ingush and  the  Balkars the  decrees by the

Presidium of the Supreme Soviet accusing these nationalities of treason and ordering their deportation came after the resettlement operations had already been completed.

10  The charge of collective treason was a mere formality used to justify the wholesale deportation of nationalities. The real reasons for the deportations lie elsewhere and  have been dealt with extensively by other  scholars.

11 This article is too short to examine the real reasons

behind the deportation of the Crimean Tatars  in extensive detail. But, the geopolitical

position of Crimea in relation to Turkey and the Black Sea, the historical conflict between Crimean Tatars and Russians extending back to the days of the Crimean Khanate, and the push for real national autonomy by the Crimean Tatar leadership of the Crimean ASSR all played an important role in Stalin’s decision to ethnically cleanse the Crimean Tatars from their homeland.

12   The charge of treason was largely a cover story to justify the decision

after it had already been made. The claims of Serov, Kobulov and Beria that 20,000 Crimean Tatar soldiers deserted the Red Army are completely without basis. The claim by Beria that all 20,000 Crimean Tatars in the Red Army went with arms in hands voluntarily to go fight for the Germans is even more fanciful, especially if the reference to desertions in 1944 is not a typographical error.

During the purge of the peninsula of “anti-Soviet elements” during April and May 1944, the NKVD arrested only 5,989 Crimean Tatars out of a total population of over 197,000 people or  just over  three percent of the population.

13  The NKVD forcibly deported the vast majority of the remaining population, 183,155 people without the benefit of any individual

10 The decrees by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet accusing these nationalities of mass treason and ordering their deportation can be found in Alieva’s three volume collection. For the Volga Germans see vol. 1,

pp. 143-144. For the Karachais see vol. 1, pp. 258-259. For the Kalmyks see vol. 2, p. 39. For the Chechens and Ingush see vol. 2, p. 87. For the Balkars see vol. 2, p. 266.

11 See the works cited above by Alieva, Berdinskikh, Bugai, Ediev, and Kulbaev and Khegai.

12 Despite the passage of time the best general coverage of these issues and historical background on the Crimean Tatars available in English is still Alan Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute, 1978). See especially pp. 168-170 for a discussion of the geo-political issues involved in the deportation.

13 Bugai 1992, doc. 13, pp. 138-139. 4 arrests or charges under the provisions of GKO order 5859.

14  On 8 June 1944, the NKVD in

Uzbekistan reported to Beria that 151,529 Crimean Tatars had arrived in their republic of

which over 80% were women and children.

15  An additional 31,551 Crimean Tatar deportees arrived in the Urals by 4 July 1944.

16  The percentage of women and children among the Crimean Tatars deported to the Urals was even higher than in Uzbekistan. Out of 9,177 Crimean Tatars to arrive in the Mari ASSR, women and children made up almost 84% of the contingent.

17 The Soviet government sent an additional 11,000 Crimean Tatars to forced labor detachments in Gur’ev, Rybinsk, Kubyshev, and the Moscow coal basin during the same time without charge or trial.

18 By  the  Soviet  government’s  own logic they had evidence of anti-Soviet activity against less than 6,000 Crimean Tatars yet they brutally punished the entire population of nearly 200,000 people, the vast majority consisting of women and children. The truth is that the 51st

 Army collapsed in face of the German onslaught as did most of the

Soviet military in the summer and fall of 1941 due to poor leadership. As a result a large

number of Crimean Tatars and other Soviet soldiers became POWs of the Germans. Some of these men later served in German organized self-defense battalions.  In the face of lethal material conditions in German POW camps, racist attacks by Soviet partisan units against

Crimean Tatar villages, and generally better treatment of the Crimean Tatar population by the Germans  than they had endured under Stalin it is surprising that the number of

collaborators was not much greater.

The motives for serving in the Crimean Tatar  self-defense battalions  formed by the

Germans were varied. One reason was to avoid the horrible material conditions suffered by Soviet POWs in German internment camps. Most of the Crimean Tatar men recruited by the Germans had previously served in the Red Army and many of them had been captured when the 51^st

Army retreated from the peninsula.    The German military authorities

confined  these men in  POW  camps in Simferopol and Nikolayev where starvation and

disease threatened to kill most of the internees.19 The fate of Soviet POWs in German hands that did not collaborate with the occupation forces can be seen by the fact that out of some seven million Red Army soldiers  captured over three million of them died in captivity.

20 Among Soviet POWs that did not collaborate with the Germans the death rate was thus around 50%. This high mortality rate provided a strong incentive for Soviet POWs to accept putting on German issued uniforms.

14 Bugai 1992, doc. 20, p. 144.

15 Document reproduced in Ali Hamzin, Krymskie Tatary v Uzbekistane, Working Paper No. 11, French Institute for the Study of Central Asia, Tashkent, Dec. 2004, p. 12.

16 Bugai 1992, doc. 16, p. 140 and doc. 20, p. 144.

17 Bugai 1992, doc. 24, p. 146.

18 Bugai 1992, doc. 13, pp. 138-139.

19 Aleksandr Nekrich, trans. George Saunders, The Punished Peoples: The Deportation And Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War, (New York, W.W. Norton, 1979), pp. 20-21; Brian Glyn Williams, "The Hidden Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims in the Soviet Union: The Exile and Repatriation of the Crimean Tatars," Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 37, no. 3 (July 2002), p. 328.

20 Nekrich, p. 5. 5 Defense of Crimean Tatar villages targeted for attack by Soviet partisan units constituted another reason for serving in German organized military battalions. The Soviet partisan

movement in Crimea was initially led by A.N. Mokrousov and A.V. Martynov.   These men proved themselves to be both militarily incompetent and extreme racists against the native Crimean Tatar population. They prohibited Crimean Tatars from serving in the ranks of the partisans and forced them out of the protection provided by wooded areas. This action led to the deaths of a number of a number of prominent Crimean Tatar communists.

21 In July 1942 they sent the first report falsely claiming the majority of Crimean Tatars were Nazi collaborators to the military commander of the South Western Front, Marshal S.M. Budenny.

22 The reports from Mokrousov and Martynov and their followers appear to have

been  the  original source for the NKVD’s justification of its decision to deport the entire

Crimean Tatar population.

23 Like the later reports by Serov, Kobulov and Beria, Mokrousov

and Martynov provided no evidence to back up their libelous claims. They did, however,

manage to alienate the Crimean Tatars from the partisan movement and in the process

cripple effective resistance to the German occupation.

During their tenure leading the Soviet partisan movement in Crimea it suffered a series of

failures against the Germans for which they blamed the Crimean Tatars. Under this pretext, Soviet partisans began a campaign of attacking Crimean Tatar villages, indiscriminately

murdering civilians and stealing their food supplies thereby condemning the survivors to

starvation.

24  For instance Mokrousov and Martynov  called for air strikes leading  to the

destruction of Stil, Kuchuk-Ozenbash and other peaceful Crimean Tatar villages.

25  The military failures of the Crimean partisan movement which stemmed in part from their focus on plundering Crimean Tatar villages rather than  fighting against the Germans became so great that in July 1942, the Soviet government removed Mokrosuov from his post.

26  As a result of Mokrousov’s  poor  leadership  the  partisan  movement  in  Crimea

declined from 3,098 members in November 1941 to 150 in November 1942.

27 According to a  number of official Soviet reports, Mokrosouv’s incompetence stemmed from being an alcoholic.

28  Given the general  acceptability of heavy drinking in Russian culture  and

especially in Russian military culture one must take this accusation to mean that

Mokrosouv could not in fact carry out  even his most basic military duties due to mental

impairment resulting from drunkenness. 

The pillaging of Crimean Tatar villages for food by Soviet partisans was far less effective as a guerilla tactic than actually sabotaging German supply lines. But, it did interfere with the ability of the German occupation forces to obtain supplies. On 2 January 1942, the German                                                             

21 Nekrich, p. 28.

22 Nekrich, p. 26.

23 Nekrich, p. 31 and Alexander Statiev, "The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942-1944: The North Caucasus, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, and Crimea," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian

History, vol. 6, no. 2, spring, 2005, p. 310.

24 Nekrich, pp. 28-30; Statiev, pp. 306-307; Williams, p. 329.

25 Nekrich, pp. 28-29.

26 Statiev, pp. 304-306.

27 Statiev, p. 306.

28 Statiev, p. 307. 6 government authorized the formation of Crimean Tatar self-defense battalions in order to guard their villages  from such raids.

29  By 15 February 1942, they had organized 1,632

Crimean Tatars into 14 companies and six battalions.

30    These units engaged in anti-partisan warfare. Finally, despite Soviet claims to the contrary even German military occupation complete with shipment to forced labor in Germany as Ostarbeiter  (workers from Eastern Europe) proved preferable for much of the Crimean Tatar population to the Stalinist repression and man-made famine that had marked the 1930s.  During this decade the Crimean Tatars suffered disproportionately even compared to most other nationalities later deported by the Stalin regime during World War II. Compared to the baseline of normal mortality among Crimean Tatars during the 1920s, the 1930s represented an increased death index of 1.966, almost double. The 1932-1933 famine and 1937-1938 Terror resulted in excess deaths totaling  4.51% of all Crimean Tatars during this decade.

31  Thus around 10,000

Crimean Tatars died from Stalinist repression and hunger during the 1930s.   Given the

brutality of the Soviet government towards the Crimean Tatars, it is not surprising that

thousands of them sided with the Germans when given the opportunity. Rather what is

surprising is that so few supported the Germans and that tens of thousands of Crimean

Tatar men continued to loyally and actively participate in the Soviet struggle against the

Nazis. 

Despite unsubstantiated claims by Serov and Kobulov that all 20,000  Crimean Tatars

serving in  the 51st Army deserted to the Germans in 1941, a very substantial number of

Crimean Tatars continued to fight in the Soviet ranks until the defeat of Nazi Germany on 9 May 1945. On  30  July 1944,  the NKVD  issued  a  decree  “On  adding  to  special  settlement registration Kalmyks, Karachais, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Greeks and Armenians demobilized from the Red Army coming to join their families in places of resettlement.”  Later decrees published at the front removed men of these nationalities from the ranks of the Red Army and sent them to special settlements.

32 NKVD records show 8,927 Crimean Tatars including 524 officers and 1,392 sergeants

demobilized from the Soviet military and sent to special settlements during 1945 and

1946.

33 Thus, about 5% of the total Crimean Tatar population and 15% of the adult male

population fought in the Soviet army against Nazi Germany until the end of the war in

1945. Crimean Tatars also fought in the ranks of the partisans after the Soviet government removed Mokrousov from his position and lifted the racist ban on their membership in its ranks. By January 1944, the partisan movement had reached 3,783 members up from its nadir of 150 members under Mokrousov. A full 630 (17%) of these members consisted of   Crimean Tatars.

34 Thus once they were allowed to serve in the partisans their participation

in the movement was proportionate to their total population. A large number of Crimean

Tatar villages also provided assistance to the partisan movement after they abandoned

their racist attacks against them in July 1942 despite the great physical risk of German

reprisals.

35  The failures of the partisan movement in Crimea had little to do with any short

comings of the Crimean Tatars and everything to do with the incompetence and racism of

its Russian leadership.

The earlier  conflict between the Crimean Tatars and the partisan movement under

Mokrousov, however, played into the preconceived needs of the NKVD to tar the entire

population with the tag of treason in order to justify their wholesale deportation. Hence in

April 1944, the reports of Mokrousov, Martynov and other racists became the  basis for

Serov, Kobulov and Beria constructing a rationale for their decision to deport the Crimean Tatars. However, this cover story is completely unbelievable. The vast majority of the deported Crimean Tatars can only be described as completely innocent of any wrong doing. Over four fifths of the deportees consisted of women and children. More Crimean Tatars fought in the Red Army and in the partisans than did with German units. Nationalities with far more collaborators avoided collective punishment.  Indeed a comparative study between collaboration with the Germans and wholesale deportation reveals little actual connection between the two. All Soviet nationalities collaborated with the Nazis to some extent. The vast majority of collaborators, however, were ethnic Russians, Ukrainians or Belorussians.  The NKVD only used the issue of collaboration as an excuse to deport nationalities already disfavored by the regime.  The charges of collective treason were brought against the Crimean Tatars by Stalin and Beria because they had already decided to deport the entire population and such charges were the standard justification for this crime against humanity. It had earlier been used to publicly justify the deportation of the Russian-Germans, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars. The fact is that the charges of collective treason were false in all these cases.

34 N.F. Bugai, L. Beria – I. Stalin: “Soglasno vashemu ukazaniiu…,” (Moscow: “AIRO XX”, 1995), p. 146.

35 Nekrich, p. 30. 8

Works Cited Alieva, S.U., ed., Tak eto bylo: Natsional’nye repressi v SSSR, 1919-1953 gody (Moscow: Insan, 1993).

Berdinskikh, V.A., Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov Sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005).

Bugai, N.F. ed., “Deportatsiia: Beriia dokladyvaet Stalinu..,” Kommunist, no. 1, 1991.

Bugai, N.F., ed., Iosif Stalin – Lavrentiiu Berii: “Ikh nado deportirovat’”: dokumenty, fakty,

kommnentarii, (Moscow: Druzhba narodov, 1992).

Bugai, N.F.,  L. Beria – I. Stalin: “Soglasno vashemu ukazaniiu…,” (Moscow: “AIRO XX”, 1995).

Bugai, N.F., ed., Deportatsiia narodov kryma: Dokumenty, fakty, kommentarii (Moscow:

Insan, 2002)

Ediev, D.M., Demograficheskie poteri deportirovannykh narodov SSSR (Stavropol’: StGAU

“AGRUS”, 2003).

Fisher, Alan, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute, 1978).

Hamzin, Ali, Krymskie Tatary v Uzbekistane, Working Paper No. 11, French Institute for the Study of Central Asia, Tashkent, Dec. 2004.

Kulbaev, T.S. and Khegai, A. Iu., Deportatsiia (Almaty: Deneker, 2000).

Nekrich, Aleksandr, trans. Saunders, George, The Punished Peoples: The Deportation And Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War, (New York, W.W. Norton, 1979).

Statiev, Alexander, "The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942-1944: The North

Caucasus, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, and Crimea," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 6, no. 2, spring, 2005.

Williams, Brian Glyn, "The Hidden Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims in the Soviet Union: The Exile and Repatriation of the Crimean Tatars," Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 37, no.

3 (July 2002).

Zemskov, V.N., Spetsposelentsy v SSSR: 1930-1960 (Moscow: Nauka, 2005).

Please read about what was happening on May 18-th  1944 here

Thanks to Sergei Svetlitsky, Editor, Maupictures Agency for these pictures

The return of Crimean Tatars to their homeland started with the beginning of the soviet Perestroika in the mid 80th. Since then around 300 settlements of compact residence of the returnees has been established. The settlements vary in size from 500 to 6000 people. The level of communication and utilities infrastructure in the majority of settlements does not meet basic needs: absence of roads, gas- and water-supply systems, medical posts, schools, and day-care facilities. Herewith, if we account for the fact that many Crimean Tatar families are not able to finish constructing their houses, it becomes clear that the Crimean Tatars in the settlements have to bid for their survival on day to day basis.
According to the Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Studies named after Olexander Razumkov, the level of unemployment among the Crimean Tatars is about two fold of the average rate of unemployment in Crimea.
To the need to overcome xenophobic treatment of many company managers and public servants, nowadays the Crimean Tatars also face problems related to the current economic crisis and contraction of production, which leads to mass redundancies. The job cuts apply first of all to those who joined most recently. In this case, it is about the Crimean Tatars.
Although Crimean Tatars now make up about 13% of the Crimean population, their representation in the executive authorities and law-enforcement bodies does not exceed 3-4%. In the judicial organs it almost equals to zero.
According to some sources, from 100 to 150 thousand of Crimean Tatars are still in the places of exile, principally in Uzbekistan. The vast majority of them are seeking to come back to their homeland, but are unable to relocate because of economic obstacles and difficulties related to various migration laws.

                                              Land Matter

     For many years there has been an acute problem of restoration of justice in the land matter. If the authorities had provided the returning to homeland repatriates with land, many of them would have been able to build houses. On the contrary, the authorities started quickly allocating the land for Russian-speaking people for country cottages and vegetable gardens. And at the same time they refused to allocate the Crimean Tatars land plots to build houses. Their aim was to bring to a halt or, at least, to hamper or impede the process of repatriation. 
     An unfair and discriminative towards repatriates’ principle of land privatization was laid in the Land Code of Ukraine adopted in 2001, where article 25 says that public lands and lands of utility agricultural enterprises, i.e. lands of former collective and state farms, can be owned only by the workers of these enterprises. Because the vast majority of Crimean Tatars and other repatriates who had returned to the Crimea from the places of exile, due to well-known circumstances, could not be members of collective and state farms on the territory of Ukraine, they could not participate in privatization. Taking into account that 75% of Crimean Tatars who returned to the homeland settled in countryside, most of them turned to be landless and, thus, without the source of income. Thus, the repatriates were not only deprived the land, houses and property that were taken away illegally during the deportation, but they were also deprived of equal rights within the process of land privatization. The owners of the large territories both in the countryside and in the cities principally appeared to be the officials of local governments, high-ranking officials from Kiev and Russia, and also various companies which usually bribe officials responsible for land allotment.
     Under such circumstances Crimean Tatars have to resort to squatter settlement at idle land for houses construction. This fact serves a ground for authorities to accuse of breach of law and leads to conflict with authorities. The most severe and crowded collisions took place at the end of 2007 in Simferopol on the Ai-Petri plateau. During the first incident thousands of people took part in the collisions – on one side – Crimean Tatars who squatted the land, which was lawlessly privatized by a company through bribes to local authorities, and on the other side – militia with armoured equipment and young non-Crimean Tatar people hired by this company.
The fiercest and bloodiest assault on the Crimean Tatars on the Ai-Petri plateau took place in 2007, when a small group of the Crimean Tatars was encountered by more than a thousand of militants headed by a far-right chauvinist general A.Mogilev, and a few armoured carriers. The authorities did not make a secret of the fact that the campaign aimed to frighten the Crimean Tatars. The operation was ruthless. The unarmed people were shot from firearms, a few people were injured. In fact, later on as a result of mass-strikes of the Crimean Tatars who demanded to prosecute the organizers of the assault with a criminal case, the general Mogilev was dismissed from the internal affairs structures as a result of the shift of the government and Y.Tymoshenko’s coming into the Prime-Minister’s Office.
     For the last years by Kiev a few land commissions were organized at a sufficiently high level to check the legality of land allotment in the Crimea. These commissions came to right conclusions, found out fragrant facts of legislation violation during the land allotment by the Crimea officials. Nevertheless, they did not take any significant measures to restore the justice in the land matter. From our point of view, one of the reasons of the failures is that many top-rank officials, who already possess illegally acquired land plots, participate in the illegal land allocation.
   
The Problems of Education on Native Language and the Reservation of National Culture and Identity

 One of the most critical and, probably, key problems of the Crimean Tatar people is a problem of preservation of native language, national culture, and national identity. It is well-known that after the deportation of Crimean Tatars all traces of Crimean Tatar material and spiritual culture, including Muslim grave yards, were destroyed. Almost all villages were renamed.
    Being in exile, Crimean Tatars were debarred from teaching their children in the native language. A few generations of Crimean Tatars grew up under the ban on schools with the Crimean Tatar language of instruction, the absence of radio and TV-programmes in the native language. The use of language was totally removed from public sphere into families. All this led to such situation that a young generation of Crimean Tatars is poorly proficient in native language even in terms of basic conversation.
    The restoration (to be exact – the reanimation) of the system of school and pre-school education with native language of instruction is impeded by significant difficulties, primarily, by the absence of resources to build a few dozens of schools simultaneously.
Taking into account that over 50 years not a single text book was prepared and published, not a single teacher for instructing in Crimean Tatar was there, you can imagine the scale of dire consequences of the losses of the Crimean Tatars in the linguistic sphere. Currently with great difficulties we managed to open 15 schools with education in native language throughout Crimea. Only around 10% of Crimean Tatars’ children of school age can be educated in these schools.
     Crimean Tatars have similar problems in revival of their several centuries' culture and national traditions. Almost everything has to be started from the very beginning - to revive the theatre, establish museums and restore the destroyed historical monuments, establish media in native language and publish  literature for children and fiction, arrange researches of historical and cultural inheritance of Crimean Tatars and present it to the publicity.
      
Involvement of the State in the Resolution of problems of the Crimean Tatars

      Soon after the independence, the Ukrainian state recognized (in the form of separate statements, not laws) the criminal character of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and of some other nationalities. It also undertakes some measures to resolve the social problems of the returnees. Five-year programs to tackle the problems are developed and every year for this purpose a certain amount is officially budgeted. However, the capacity of this financial resource is too limited to meet needs and cannot compensate the losses that people incurred during the deportation. For example, in 2009 on the resolution of the problems of deported people there was only 53 million grivnas allocated, which makes around 7 million dollars (to illustrate, construction of one school for 500 pupils costs approximately 40 million grivnas).
      Though the process of the Crimean Tatars’ return to their land has lasted for over 20 years, the process of repatriation of the Crimean Tatar people moves on under absence of special laws called to fully and fairly resolve problems related to the return, provision of necessary facilities and rehabilitation of the rights of the Crimean Tatars.
      Our numerous attempts to get the highest authoritative bodies of the state of Ukraine to take measures to settle the Crimean Tatars’ problem, at least gradually but on basis of laws, were fruitless.
     Adopted in 2004, the law of Ukraine “On the rehabilitation of rights of persons deported on the ethnicity grounds” was passed by vote of 384 national deputies, but vetoed by then President of Ukraine Leonyd Kutschma. Afterwards the parliament of Ukraine, as a result of partisanship, when a few parties pulled back, did not manage to reconsider it.
Though Crimean situation and the necessity of the special laws of Ukraine, restoring Crimean Tatars’ rights, in 2009 only was addressed by the representatives of various international organizations, including the High Commissioner on National Minorities, sir Knut Vollebek and the President of European Union Committee of the Regions, sir Luck van den Brand - for what we are so grateful to them – their recommendations remained unheard by Ukrainian government and politicians.
        In fact, the problem of creation of solid legal grounding of the whole process of return, provision of social infrastructure and rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar rights, which is a must and a guaranty for preservation and further development of the indigenous people of Crimea, is seen by us as a cornerstone problem. If unresolved, it is hard to expect a favourable resolution of other issues pertinent to the development of Crimea.
        In this regard, we breed our greatest hopes on the expansion of cooperation among EU member-states and Ukraine within the frame of “Eastern Partnership” program, called to assist democracy, good governance establishment, the rise of stability, and the expansion of cross-cultural dialogue.


The Situation after the Presidential election

       The electoral preferences of Crimean Tatars usually differ from preferences of the majority of Russian-speaking constituents in Crimea, which is why the level of distrust among the ethnic groups rises during the election campaign. Especially it applies to local authorities’ election. A lot of candidates emerge to convince constituents that they will protect “Russian interests’ in Crimea most effectively, they will not allow “the tatarization of Crimea” etc. During the last presidential election Russian-speaking population of Crimea overwhelmingly voted for V.Yanukovitsch, who is considered a pro-Russian and anti-western politician. The national assembly of the Crimean Tatars called on its fellow-Crimean Tatars to vote in the first round for a candidate from national-democratic camp, and in the second round the vast majority of them voted for Y.Timoschenko, who openly supports the ideas of European integration of Ukraine and becoming of it the EU member. Among 17% of votes given for Y.Timoschenko in the second tour, around 10-12% were of Crimean Tatars. Fortunately, there was very little interethnic unease during the last election, not considering a few deceitful publications in the press and distribution of dirty papers against the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People.
After a new President comes into office, he usually makes remarkable personnel shifts and within the scope of his mandate ties to appoint everywhere people who are devoted to him and to his party. In Crimea even before the elections the power used to belong to the “Regions’ Party”, namely, the party of the elected President, V.Yanukovitsch, and the allies of this party – a few pro-Russian  organizations. Only few comparatively high positions which were appointed by the president with the approval of the Council of Ministers, such as heads of district authorities, Resident representative in the Crimea etc., were members of other parties or did not have any affiliation. Apparently, now the power in Crimea will be concentrated in the hands of the “Regions’ Party” and its allies even more extensively. This goes in line with lay-offs for more or less moderate officials – members of this very party. For example, during the session of Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea taking place today, 17th of March in Simferopol, bringing down of the speaker of the autonomy parliament, A.Gryzenko is expected. His fault was being not active enough during the presidential election. And at his position an entrepreneur from the same party is going to be elected. According to the press, the pretender for the office of the autonomy’s prime-minister was also the mentioned above general A.Mogilev, who was the head of V.Yanukovitsch’s election campaign in the Crimea. In private talks, this general promises to “clean” all the authoritative bodies from Crimean Tatars.
      To illustrate the political views of this general I would like to cite just a few lines from his article “The situation in the Crimea is developing after Kosovo script”, published in one of the most numerous and pro-Russian Crimea newspapers- “Krymskaya Pravda”:
«There is a shameful page in the contemporary history of the Crimean Tatar people – the mass betrayal during the Second World War… Probably, at that time, when the war was still on, the leadership of the country did rightly and humanely. Crimea is a bordering territory, a strategically important stronghold, and having an enemy in the rear would be absolutely unwise and incautious… Departing from these assumptions, in summer 1941 two thousands of ethnic Germans were deported from Crimea. Humanity here stems from the understanding that after the war the state would face difficulties in restraining the mass revenge and lynching by the local population against the forces, which voluntarily participated in the killings of the locals.
Further in the text, the general describing the Crimean Tatars writes: “…Oriental cunning always would allow them applying the image of deprived, humiliated, and persecuted victims, and the Quran does not become an obstacle in obtaining handouts from the state of disbelievers…”
Namely, the assault is not only addressed to the nation, it also touches upon the religion of Islam.  It is remarkable that the article was published when he was a chief police officer in Crimea.
Being worried that such a fascist minded person occupies such a responsible position in Crimea, I communicated this to the leaders of his political party V. Yanukovich and N. Azarov. I gave them the texts of Mogilev’s articles and warned of potential acute worsening of the situation in the peninsula. They promised they would try to allocate him to a different region in Ukraine far from Crimea. And now, on March 11th, this general is appointed the Minister for Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Further comments on this issue, I think, are needless.
To our great disappointment, such cases, when people like this Mogilev occupying high flying offices in the central government in Kiev and, especially, in Crimea, are not rare.

    Expectations from the European Parliament and the European Union

Let me now say a few words on what we would expect from the European Parliament, the European Union, and the European Commission.
On October 23rd, 2008, the democratic forces of Ukraine with great feeling of satisfaction welcomed the Resolution, which declared the Holodomor, organized by the Soviet regime against the Ukrainian people, a crime against humanity. A similar assessment by the European Parliament of the genocide and deportation of the Crimean Tatar people from its motherland, which was followed by almost half-a-century forceful detention in the exile, will be a significant contribution to the cause of restoration of fairness and justice in regard to this nation. This will also serve as a powerful impetus for improvement of interethnic climate in Crimea.
The Resolution from April 2nd, 2009, adopted by the European Parliament on “European consciousness and totalitarianism” specifically points that “from the outset European integration has been a response to the suffering inflicted by two world wars and the Nazi tyranny that led to the Holocaust and to the expansion of totalitarian and undemocratic Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as a way of overcoming deep divisions and hostility in Europe through cooperation and integration and of ending war and securing democracy in Europe».
The Crimean Tatar problem implies that mitigation of the destructive consequences of the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people and the decades of its forceful exile requires a special approach of member-countries of EU and the European Union as a whole.
Having said that, we call the European Union to planning and implementation together with the state of Ukraine with actual involvement of the Crimean Tatars of special programs, which would facilitate rehabilitation and development of one of the European peoples – the Crimean Tatar people, which because of the crimes of the totalitarian communist regime is now on the verge of loss of its linguistic and cultural identity.
To the list of these programs, in addition to current efforts applied by the European Union to support Ukraine in adopting laws on rehabilitation of the rights of the Crimean Tatar, we also refer:
1. Construction of dozens of schools and pre-school facilities in the Crimean Tatar settlements;
2. Assistance in development of material and scientific assets of the Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical  University (Simferopol), which is a primary place for upbringing of specialists in humanities aimed at restoration of the Crimean Tatar language, culture and arts;
3. Renovation of unique historical and architectural objects of Crimean Tatar medieval cultural heritage;
4. Assistance in developing digital and print media in the Crimean Tatar language;
5. Assistance in developing initiatives of small and medium enterprises among the repatriates;
6. Assistance in easing of mechanisms of repatriation for over one hundred thousand Crimean Tatars, who are still in exile against their will.

Accordingly, we assume that these and other issues related to the Crimean Tatar problem shall be included in the agenda of Association “Ukraine – EU”.

I once again thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to inform you about our problems. I hope that European structures will make their contribution to the resolution of urgent problems of Crimea. At the same time this will be a contribution to the cause of strengthening of independent democratic Ukraine and strengthening stability in the Black Sea basin of Eastern Europe.
I appreciate your attention and I will now gladly answer all your questions concerning Crimea.

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The Crimean Tatars were deported in mass to Uzbekistan, Siberia and other regions of former USSR by Stalinist regime in May18, 1944, and they were forced to work in very hard and inhuman conditions at cotton farms and nuclear factories and facilities where many  of them died by radiation. The Crimean tatars returned to their ancestor land during Gorbachiov “perestroika reform” in 1986 but the majority returned  to Crimea after collapsed of the communism regime in USSR. Today over 300,000 of Crimean tatars live in Crimea.

For more pictures please click here: http://picasaweb.google.com/awdet.org

By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer

VESELE, Ukraine - >From his sparsely furnished house in a valley winding down to the Black Sea, Bekir Abilvapov can almost see his childhood home, but he hasn't set foot in it since he returned to Crimea after a half-century in exile on the steppes of Central Asia.

"They didn't let me in," Abilvapov said of the Slavic family now living in the house he left at age 14 when nearly 200,000 Crimean Tatars were forcibly removed from their homeland.

The old man's grizzled face, with its look of sorrow and anger, reflects this painful history and helps explain the Tatars' volatile relations with the mostly Slavic non-Tatars who are the majority on the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine.

In Vesele, a Slavic man died in January after a beating blamed on Crimean Tatars that gave rise to a bloody brawl involving dozens of people. Each group has its version of the incident, but one thing is certain: it turned remote, placid-looking Vesele — whose name means "happy" in Ukrainian — into a town of wary glances and mutual recriminations.

The Crimean Tatars are a Turkic people who inhabited Crimea for more than seven centuries; historians trace their origins to the invasion by Mongols who seized much of present-day Russia and Ukraine in the 13th century.

In 1944, dictator Josef Stalin accused the Crimean Tatars of collaborating with the Nazis and ordered them exiled to the then-Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. On May 18 — 60 years ago Tuesday — tens of thousands were packed into trains for an agonizing journey, and nearly 200,000 were deported within three days. Thousands died of hunger and disease during the first weeks of exile.

Abilvapov was among some 265,000 Crimean Tatars who have come to the peninsula in a wave starting about 15 years ago, as the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of collapse. They now make up 13 percent of the population.

With their own homes mostly occupied by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians settled there by the authorities, Tatars were given land — or just took it, squatting in mud huts or tarpaper shacks — and built homes of sand-yellow brick that now dot the peninsula.

The Tatars say that the best land was handed out to non-Tatars, leaving them with rocky, swampy or hard-to-reach plots. They are struggling for more, better land — a process given added urgency by a law, expected to be introduced by 2007, that will allow land sales and grant of plots to individuals around their homes.

Tension has increased as Tatars seek land on Crimea's lush southern coast, meeting fierce resistance from local authorities clinging to control over lucrative real estate in what was the Soviet Union's most desirable vacation destination.

Remzi Ilyasov, vice chairman of the Crimean Tatar leadership body, the Mejlis, claimed 75 percent of Crimean Tatars lived in the south before the deportation. He accused authorities of foot-dragging on ceding land to the Tatars while selling choice property to others — including Russian interests.

Non-Tatars in Crimea, where ethnic Russians are the majority, dispute the historical claim to the land.

One land dispute on the southern coast led to violence twice this spring, and in March several people were injured in ethnic-based clashes in the regional capital Simferopol.

Most Crimeans, Tatar and non-Tatar, say they get along fine and accuse community leaders, officials and politicians of aggravating ethnic differences for personal gain.

"They say, 'You know, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, it will be Kosovo, Chechnya (news - web sites),'" Ilyasov said, referring to two lands in the former Eastern Bloc where wars pitting Orthodox Christian Slavs against Muslims have flared in the past decade.

In Crimea, the post-Soviet revival of both faiths throws religious tension into the volatile mix. Mosques have sprouted in Tatar communities, and some Slavs have formed Cossack detachments — informal policing organs — with ties to Russian Orthodox churches.

Crimean Tatar leaders advocate secular democracy and traditional Islam, and a senior Western diplomat in Ukraine said there seems to be little religious extremism in the community. But there is fear that extremists from outside could foment conflict.

"It just needs an external actor to come and ignite the whole process," said Manoj Basnyat, the U.N. Development Program's deputy resident representative in Ukraine.

In December 1918, the famous Romanian historian, Nicolae Iorga was underlying that Romania has been endorsing an indiscriminatory political system, treating all citizens, including minorities, as equals. Dobrogea can reflect very well the ethnic inter-relations which is based on reciprocal respect between the Romanians and Crimean Tatar minority.

Dobrogea was the oasis where the Crimean  Tatars, like Ali Bekmambet, Mehmet Ablay, Necati, Mehmet Niyazi, Mustecip Ulkusal, Newzat Yusuf, Ismail Ziyaeddin, Mehmet Yurtsever and others who sacrificed their life for Crimean Tatars spiritual and political cause.

Among the Tatars who worked tirelessly in the cultural and political arena, was Negip Hagi Fazal. He was born to Hagi Fazal and Serife on April 17, 1906 in the village Tatarul, Dobrogea.  After having finished his studies at the Muslim Theology Institute, he went to Bucharest to study Economics Science. However, he returned to Dobrogea to make his contribution to a political magazine, “Emel”, whose chief editor and founder was his brother Mustecip Ulkusal. Through this magazine, Negip Hagi Fazal was able to dessiminate the ideology of the Crimean Tatars who were punished during the Stalin era and later found refugee in Romania. During this constant work of writing poems and publications against the Russian Stalinist regime, he encouraged and reminded the Crimean Tatars the cause of their fight against this political destabilization. Furthermore, Negip Hagi Fazal made a mass organization in how to hide the Crimean Tatar refugees from NKDV agents. Unfortunately, this lead the NKDV agents to physically and mentally torture Negip for eight days until his death on October 22, 1948.

Negip Hagi Fazal will remain one of the most celebrated  romanian Crimean Tatar hero who sacrificed his life for the Tatar ideology.

Iskender Ibram
Hamilton,Ont.