DEMOCRACY  BY TIMOSHENKO

More than 20.000 Crimean Tatar' families, which have returned from the places of deportation, for many years get the ungrounded refusals in land allotments by Crimean authorities. They organized a picket near the building of the Supreme Ministers, which is already for 80 days requiring from the Government the allotment of lands for habitation building. These lands are located on empty and unutilized for many years fields, and the ownship belongs to different ministries and departments of the state.

The decree of the President of Ukraine # 435/2008 "About additional measures on providing the right for land of the citizens, who live on the territory of Crimean Autonomic Republic" (May, 14, 2008), set up the task for the Supreme Ministers to solve the land problem in Crimea.

Within the past year the Government of Timoshenko did nothing for solving the acute problem. Moreover, during this year several serious land conflicts happened in Crimea, when to the fields of protest the special troops were attracted with the permission to apply the table weapon against the unarmed repatriates in their built houses and mosques. At the same time hundreds of hectares of Crimean land were sold out to business corporations close to authorities, that was made with violation of all norms and requirements of the Ukrainian land legislation.

Indignant at open sabotage of the Decree of President, on May, 12, 2009 Crimean Tatars have organized the picketing of the Supreme Ministers of Ukraine, requiring from the Government to stop the land lawlessness in Crimea and to decide the land problems of repatriates.

During the picket the two-week hunger-strike was held, which resulted in hospitalization of three participants of action. Dozens of written appeals of the picketers remained without any answer, that also contradicted with all operating norms of law in Ukraine.

Moreover, instead of the execution of the task of the President, the Government, with the help of law structures, renders the psychological and physical pressure on the picketers, trying to force them to give up the requirements. The picketers are forbidden to put the tents, people are forced to spend the nights in the open sky, regardless any weather conditions. The informative block of the picket was set - not a single central TV channel of Ukraine during 80 days gave at least one report about the action. The Government blackmails the protesters, saying that the land question will not be decided until the picket is not cut down.

But how is it possible to trust those, who have built the policy on deception? During the hunger-strike the picketers were promised that the question will be decided, as soon as they will stop the hunger-strike. The exhausted people trusted the authorities, stopped the hunger-strike and even purchased the tickets to return to Crimea, but they were cynically deceived. The question is not decided till now. Moreover, the authorities from demonstrative inactivity have turned to the active actions against the picketers.

At night, July 29-30, the Crimean Tatar picket was attacked. More than thirty men, who have arrived by bus with darkened windows and mudded numbers, attacked asleep participants of action of protest, broke the placards and transparencies, scattered about and stole the property of the picketers. The militiamen, instead of providing safety of action, were watching apathetically what was going on, that obviously specifies the involvement of authorities to the happened attack.

The picketers have sent the statements to the President of Ukraine, Prime Minister, the Executive of Verkhovna Rada in human rights, General Prosecutor, minister of the Ministry of Internal Affaires, with a requirement to halt the lawlessness, find and call for responsibility the guilty in that violation of human rights.

The participants of the action of protest declare that no intrigues of the Government will compel them to cut down the picket and give up the requirements. "We have no other choice. Our children need habitation, and our parents, who were deprived the houses by the criminal Stalin regime and experienced all horrors of genocide in deportation, need roof over a head", say the picketers. On their opinion, the responsibility for the gross violation of human rights lies on the Prime-Minister Julia Timoshenko, as the Chief of the executive power in the country.

Server Bekirov
July 30, 2009