Tag: Crimea

  • Crimean Tatars Mark Deportation Anniversary

    Crimean Tatars Mark Deportation Anniversary

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    Crimea’s Tatars mark Deportation Day in Simferapol.
    May 18, 2010
    SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Ukraine’s Crimean Tatar minority has marked the 66th anniversary of their deportation, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian and Tatar-Bashkir services report.

    On May 18, 1944, Soviet Army and Interior Ministry troops deported the entire Tatar population of Crimea — some 180,000 people — to Siberia and Central Asia on the orders of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

    Thousands of people died along the journey.

    In 1991, the Crimean Tatars received official permission to return to Crimea. They currently make up more than 12 percent of the Crimean Peninsula’s population of some 2.1 million.

    Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych issued a decree last week calling on the authorities “to provide all necessary conditions for marking the 66th anniversary of the deportation at the appropriate level.”

    Crimean Tatar leaders and activists have been holding commemorative gatherings and mourning ceremonies in Crimea since May 16.

    Mustafa Dzhemilev, the leader of the Crimean Tatar parliament, or Mejlis, said on May 17 that the gatherings are not protest actions but acts of mourning.

    The Day to Commemorate the Victims of the Deportation has been marked every year in Crimea since 1993.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Crimean_Tatars_Mark_Deportation_Anniversary/2046088.html

  • Crimea’s Stability Under Threat, Crimean Tatar Leader Warns

    Crimea’s Stability Under Threat, Crimean Tatar Leader Warns

    Paul Goble

    Vienna, March 17 – Mustafa Cemilev, the leader of the Crimean Tatar national movement, warned the European Parliament that the situation in his homeland is increasingly fragile in the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008 and the recent election of pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich as president of Ukraine.
    Those two events, he argued, have exacerbated a situation already tense because of the anti-Crimean Tatar rhetoric and actions of the local ethnic Russian community, which justifies its presence there by attacking the Crimean Tatars, and by the failure of the Ukrainian government to provide the necessary support for the Crimean Tatars on their return from exile.
    Lest the situation deteriorate still further, Cemilev continued, the European Parliament not only needs to declare the Soviet deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 a genocide, an action fully in keeping with that body’s actions on Stalin-era crimes against humanity, but take a number of specific steps to reduce tensions and ensure the survival of the Crimean Tatar nation.
    While it is unlikely that the European Parliament will take any immediate action – there are too many countervailing pressures – Cemilev and the Crimean Tatars can claim a real victory by attracting attention to a problem that all too many government officials and even human rights activists often view as an historical matter.
    And by suggesting that instability and violence are real possibilities in Crimea unless the European Parliament and other international bodies take note and take action, Cemilev is forcing such groups and international opinion more generally to recognize that if they fail to take steps now in a small place about which they know little, they will bear responsibility for what happens.
    Cemilev, the head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, began his remarks by thanking the European Parliament for paying attention to the issues of his people and homeland by devoting “a special session” to the discussion of the problems in Ukraine and in Crimea.
    The problems of Crimea, a region that constitutes four percent of Ukraine’s area and five percent of its population, have “became more complicated and disturbing after the war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008” and the adoption of a new Russian military doctrine saying that Moscow has the right to use force beyond its borders if Russian citizens are threatened.
    Those developments have intensified the feelings of many ethnic Russians there that the exile of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 was not a genocide but rather an appropriate punishment for their supposed “collaboration” because such feelings justify the presence of the ethnic Russians there and the mistreatment or even expulsion of the Crimean Tatars.
    In his remarks, Cemilev talked about the many problems the Crimean Tatars face: the difficulties they have in gaining ownership of land, their low representation in government offices, the obstacles they face in maintaining schools and opening mosques, and the continuing exile of the more than 100,000 members of their nation who have not been able to return.
    And these problems have been intensified recently by the election of Viktor Yanukovich, “who is considered a pro-Russian and anti-Western politician,” as president of Ukraine, a man the ethnic Russians of Crimea overwhelmingly supported but that the Crimean Tatars overwhelmingly opposed.
    This situation, Cemilev continued, could lead to instability, and consequently, the Crimean Tatar leader called on the European Parliament not only to declare the expulsion of the Crimean Tatars a genocide but also to support a series of specific programs to ensure that the Crimean Tatars, “now on the verge of the loss of linguistic and cultural identity,” will survive.
    Cemilev called on the European institution to support the construction of schools for the Crimean Tatars, the renovation of Crimean Tatar historical and cultural treasures, the promotion of digital and print media in Crimean Tatar, the development of small and mid-sized enterprises, and, perhaps most important, support for easing repatriation efforts for those not yet returned.
    If the European Parliament and other European structures respond even in part, Cemilev concluded, their efforts will represent “a contribution to the cause of strengthening an independent and democratic Ukraine and stability in the greater Black Sea region in Eastern Europe.

    NOTE: Mubbeyin Altan, head of the Crimean Tatar Information and Research Center in the United States, kindly provided the author with an English and a Russian text of Mustafa Jemilev’s remarks in Brussels. Anyone who would like to receive a copy of these texts can do so by sending an email to paul.goble@gmail.com

    http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2010/03/window-on-eurasia-crimeas-stability.html

  • Linguists Urge Crimean Tatars To Switch To Latin Alphabet

    Linguists Urge Crimean Tatars To Switch To Latin Alphabet

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    February 17, 2010

    SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Crimean Tatar language experts have approved a move to stop using the Cyrillic alphabet and return to the Latin alphabet, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service reports.
    The issue was discussed by dozens of linguists and other language experts at a special seminar held in Simferopol, Ukraine, on February 15. The experts presented research outlining the grammar of the Crimean Tatar language using the Latin alphabet and agreed on orthographic rules for it to be written using Latin letters.
    They have also recommended that the World Congress of Crimean Tatars (KTDK) formally approve the change.

    Eden Mamut, the secretary-general of the Black Sea Regional Union of Universities and professor at Romania’s Ovidius University, said establishing a common orthography for Crimean Tatar based on the Latin alphabet is an important step in helping unite the some 1.4 million Crimean Tatars who live in several different countries, the majority in Turkey.

    KTDK President Refat Chubarov stated at the seminar that “there is no other alternative for the creation of a productive, communicative system for understanding between all Crimean Tatars than returning to the Latin alphabet and developing a single Crimean Tatar language.”
    Crimean Tatars are an indigenous people of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula who were deported by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to Central Asia in the 1940s. Many returned to Crimea after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

    Crimean Tatars used the Arabic alphabet before the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in 1917. They were then forced — as were all other Muslim minorities in the Soviet Union — to use the Latin alphabet. They were later ordered to use Cyrillic starting in the 1940s. Many Crimean Tatars abroad still use the Arabic and Latin alphabets, while those living in post-Soviet countries use Cyrillic.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Linguists_Urge_Crimean_Tatars_To_Switch_To_Latin_Alphabet/1960330.html

  • Crimean Tatar Leader Claims FSB Behind Murder Plan

    Crimean Tatar Leader Claims FSB Behind Murder Plan

    F630A4F1 99CD 4E14 BDEA B370DEB67210 w393 sMustafa Dzhemilev (center) said he knows from diplomatic sources about FSB plans to have him killed.
    October 29, 2009
    KYIV — Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev says he believes Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is behind a special operation to assassinate him, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reports.

    Two members of the Islamist group At-Takfir wal-Hidjra were arrested on October 26 during a special operation in several parts of the Ukrainian region.

    Leaders of the movement are alleged to have issued a fatwa to kill Dzhemilev and some of his associates for their criticism of radical Islam.

    Dzhemilev told RFE/RL that members of a radical Islamic movement who were recently arrested “could hardly” initiate such an assassination plan.

    Dzhemilev said the spiritual direction of the Crimean Muslims and radical Islamist organizations share a “mutual enmity.” He added that radical Islamists have nothing in common with Islam and should be called extremists.

    But Dzhemilev said he knows from diplomatic sources about FSB plans to have him killed. He said “some states who are not interested in allowing democratization in Ukraine” might be sponsoring the extremist Islamic organizations.

    Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko said the arrested members of the Islamist group are refusing to talk. He said they refuse to recognize Ukrainian laws and say they are subordinate only to their religion.

    Crimean police chief Gennady Moskal told RFE/RL that an estimated 100 members of extremist organizations are active in Crimea. He said security forces are searching for At-Takfir wal-Hidjra’s leader.

    Moskal added that some refugees from Uzbekistan join up with Ukrainian extremist organizations.

    He said he does not believe there is “a Russian trace” in any assassination plan for Dzhemilev.

    Dzhemilev, who is the chairman of the Crimean Tatar Assembly and spent many years in the gulag as a Soviet dissident, had previously called on the Ukrainian government to allow the 33 Crimean Tatar parliament members to carry arms due to threats from Islamic extremists.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Crimean_Tatar_Leader_Claims_FSB_Behind_Murder_Plan/1864556.html
  • JOINING BATTLE FOR CRIMEA

    JOINING BATTLE FOR CRIMEA

    RUSSIA IS LOSING THE BATTLE OVER THE CRIMEA TO WASHINGTON AND BRUSSELS
    Author: Tatiana Ivzhenko
    [The European Union vies for clout with the Crimea.]

    Nezavisimaya Gazeta
    October 20, 2009

    The European Union joins the Russian-American backstage battle for
    the Crimea. Web site of the Ukrainian government posted a brief
    note to the effect that implementation of the EU’s Joint
    Initiative of the Commonwealth in the Crimea was going to begin
    right after election of the president. The program in question
    included investment projects in all economic and social spheres.
         Sources in the government claim that European countries’ plan
    of actions on the peninsula was already charted and that its
    endorsement was scheduled for spring 2010. Each EU participant
    will be put in charge of some particular sphere like economic
    development (Great Britain), environmental protection (Sweden),
    and civil society (the Netherlands). Finland, Germany, Hungary,
    Poland, Lithuania and, perhaps, Estonia are prepared to join the
    program too. Kiev counts on up to 12 million euros worth of
    investments in the Crimea in 2010 alone. Gunnar Wiegand who
    represents the European Commission in the project recently met
    with the government of Ukraine. He informed the Ukrainians that
    the European Union regarded the Crimea as an extremely important
    region, “one with a powerful potential for all of Europe”.
         As far as Senior Deputy Premier Alexander Turchinov was
    concerned, the new Crimean project meant rapid rapprochement with
    Europe and a wholly new level of relations with it.
         “The project is of paramount importance for the government of
    Ukraine and for Yulia Timoshenko… particularly at the onset of
    the presidential campaign,” Konstantin Bondarenko of the Gorshenin
    Institute of Management Issues confirmed. “It offers them an
    opportunity to show that the Crimea is part of Ukraine and, also
    importantly, that Ukraine is a country to invest in.” Bondarenko
    recalled that President Leonid Kuchma had approached the Russians
    with analogous ideas in 2002 – 2003 [with the idea of joint
    investments in development of the peninsula]. “Unfortunately, I
    cannot call the Russians particularly enthusiastic or energetic,”
    he said. “At the very least, I do not think much of the economic
    results of the Russians’ activeness. The impression is that they
    erroneously made an emphasis on politics but people cannot be
    expected to last long on slogans alone.”
         Vladimir Kazarin of the Sevastopol administration seconded
    this opinion. “It is clear now that Russia is losing the battle
    for influence with the Crimea. It was Russia and the United States
    vying for clout with the peninsula once, but no longer. The
    European Union is joining them too, these days, and Brussels makes
    an emphasis on investments rather than on politics.”
         Kazarin pointed out that the new player moved in just as
    Russia was losing ground. “We witness these days what would have
    been considered impossible barely a year ago,” he said. “We see
    pickets with anti-Russian slogans and posters in front of the
    Black Sea Fleet HQ. What counts is that these protest actions are
    organized by Black Sea Fleet’s ex-employees. I can only surmise
    that the Russian authorities are not informed, that they do not
    grasp long-term political consequences of the current underfunding
    of the Black Sea Fleet… when 8,000 employees including 1,000
    officers are to be laid off, when wage arrears mount along with
    debts to Sevastopol’s department of public works and to the
    pensions foundation. The situation is challenging indeed. Anyone
    capable of solving economic problems of Sevastopol and, broader,
    all of the Crimea will earn the locals’ gratitude,” Kazarin said.
         Neither did the United States withdraw from the battle for
    the peninsula. Establishment of a diplomatic mission or
    information bureau in Sevastopol was suggested this spring but
    protests from the population and the local authorities persuaded
    Washington to table the idea then. It is on the agenda again,
    these days. It is the US Consulate General that the Americans want
    to set up in the Crimea now. “The way I see it, problems were
    encountered because the Crimean authorities had deliberately gone
    too far in their efforts to make the whole matter political,”
    Vladimir Nalivaichenko of the Ukrainian Security Service said.
    “What can be so political about an American mission? We all see
    how the Russian Consulate General operates in the Crimea.
    Diplomats were the first to arrive, followed by Russian
    businesses, capitals, and so on.”
         Valery Chaly of the Razumkov Center did not think that the
    Americans could really count on unproblematic existence in the
    Crimea. The population was thoroughly suspicions of all and any
    Washington’s initiatives concerning the peninsula, he said. Not so
    the EU’s initiatives which the locals never associated with
    politics.
         Political scientists meanwhile comment that Russia does not
    even try to counter these Western moves. Crimean pro-Russian
    organizations complain of the lack of support. The Russian
    Community of the Crimea, Russian Bloc, Russian Crimea, Tavria
    Alliance, Faith, Crimean Civil Activists, and Crimean Russian
    Youth Center set up a coordinating council. This body will chart a
    common strategy and coordinate joint efforts aimed at “promotion
    of the Russians’ legitimate rights and interests.”
         One of the activists explained that interests of the Russians
    were vulnerable and needed promotion because “the Ukrainian
    authorities and their Western patrons are determined to drive the
    Black Sea Fleet out of the Crimea while everyone is distracted by
    the crisis.” The activist commented that the news of the EU’s
    initiatives was released in the midst of fresh scandals involving
    the Black Sea Fleet. Ukrainian media outlets reported movement of
    the fleet’s units and forces – allegedly to training grounds – the
    Ukrainian authorities had never been notified of in advance. Local
    nationalists appealed to the authorities to confiscate military
    hardware of the Black Sea Fleet for violation of the terms of
    presence specified by Ukrainian-Russian agreements.
         Ukrainian experts point out that Moscow deliberately refuses
    to acknowledge the latest scandals involving the fleet and the
    Ukrainian organizations that volunteer to promote interests of
    Russia. Political scientists agree that political actions are
    pointless when there is an economic crisis to grapple with.
    Economic projects, ones that offer jobs, salaries, and security
    are the only thing capable of swaying public opinion. Economic
    projects are precisely what the European Union might beat the
    United States and Russia with.

  • Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea

    Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea

    Kremlin Asserting Its Influence in Region
    By Philip P. Pan
    Washington Post Foreign Service
    October 6, 2009

    SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine — On maps, Crimea is Ukrainian territory, and this naval citadel on its southern coast is a Ukrainian city. But when court bailiffs tried to serve papers at a lighthouse here in August, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed troops from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet who delivered them to police as if they were trespassing teenagers.

    The humiliating episode underscored Russia’s continuing influence in the storied peninsula on the Black Sea nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union — and the potential for trouble here ahead of Ukraine’s first presidential vote since the 2005 Orange Revolution.

    Huge crowds of protesters defied Moscow in that peaceful uprising and swept a pro-Western government into power. Now, the Kremlin is working to undo that defeat, ratcheting up pressure on this former Soviet republic to elect a leader more amenable to Russia’s interests in January.

    Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a letter in August demanding policy reversals from a new Ukrainian government, including an end to its bid to join NATO. He also introduced a bill authorizing the use of troops to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers abroad, a measure that some interpreted as targeting Crimea.

    A group of prominent Ukrainians, including the country’s first president, responded with a letter urging President Obama to prevent a “possible military intervention” by Russia that would “bring back the division of Europe.” Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and other world powers, they noted.

    If a crisis is ahead, it is likely to involve Crimea, a peninsula of rolling steppe and sandy beaches about the size of Maryland. The region was once part of Russia, and it is the only place in Ukraine where ethnic Russians are the majority. In the mid-1990s, it elected a secessionist leader who nearly sparked a civil war.

    Crimea is also home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Sevastopol under a deal with Ukraine that expires in 2017. Russia wants to extend the lease, but Ukraine’s current government insists it must go.

    “It would be easy for Russia to inspire a crisis or conflict in Crimea if it continues to lose influence in Ukraine,” said Grigory Perepelitsa, director of the Foreign Policy Institute in the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy. “That’s the message they’re sending to any future president.”

    Russia’s state-controlled media, widely available and popular in Crimea, have hammered the authorities in Kiev as irredeemably anti-Russian, and prominent Russian politicians have been calling for reunification with Crimea.

    But five years of policies in Kiev aimed at drawing Ukraine closer to Europe and the United States and at promoting Ukrainian language and history have also alienated the region. Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko, the hero of the Orange Revolution, won only 6 percent of the vote here.

    “He tried to force his ideology on us, and he failed,” said Valeriy Saratov, chairman of the Sevastopol city council. “We don’t feel we were conquered by Russia, but by Europe. We fought the Italians, the Germans, the French, the British. . . . We would never take sides against Russia.”

    Vladimir Struchkov, a pro-Russia activist and leader of a parents’ organization in Sevastopol, said residents are especially upset about a new regulation requiring students to take college entrance exams in Ukrainian, eliminating a Russian option.

    While Kiev is playing identity politics, he argued, Moscow has been investing in Sevastopol, building schools, apartments and pools, repairing monuments and even opening a branch of Moscow State University.

    The result has been a sharp shift in Crimean attitudes. In 2006, about 74 percent of Crimean residents regarded Ukraine as their motherland, but by last year, that figure had fallen to 40 percent, according to a survey by the Razumkov Center, a top research institute in Kiev.

    Crimea became part of the Russian empire in 1783 after a long period of rule by Crimean Tatars, an indigenous Turkic people. During World War II, Germany captured the peninsula. After the war, the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin accused the Tatars of Nazi collaboration and ordered their mass deportation. The Communists then sought to resettle the peninsula with politically reliable families, mostly Russians with ties to the military or the party apparatus.

    When the Soviet Union collapsed, these people suddenly found themselves living in Ukraine instead of Russia, because Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 in a move that had little impact at the time.

    Today, about 60 percent of the region’s 2.3 million residents are Russian and 25 percent are Ukrainian. But the two ethnic groups are thoroughly intertwined. Opinion polls show majorities of both want the Black Sea Fleet to stay and support reunification with Russia, though there is similar support for greater autonomy for Crimea within Ukraine.

    Crimean Tatars, who were allowed to return in the 1980s, make up about 10 percent of the population and are largely opposed to a return to Russian rule.

    Refat Chubarov, a leader of the main Crimean Tatar political organization, said Russian media have vilified his people as criminals, playing on fears of Islam and their efforts to reclaim lost homes. But even among the Tatars, frustration with Kiev is rising.

    “We are the strongest supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty in Crimea,” Chubarov said. “But the disappointment is growing because the authorities have not done enough to provide land and other compensation to returning families.”

    Volodymyr Pritula, a veteran journalist and political analyst in Crimea, said the Kremlin has been trying to provoke ethnic conflict in the region, both to undermine the Ukrainian government and provide an excuse for intervention.

    Three years ago, Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s president, offered to help resolve tensions in Crimea after a clash between Russians and Tatars and suggested that the Russian fleet should stay to “guarantee stability,” Pritula noted.

    In recent months, he added, the Kremlin has stepped up its activities, with Russian nationalist groups staging protests on Ukrainian holidays and media outlets resuming the attacks on Tatars after a pause last year.

    Emotions have been running high since Russia’s war last year with another pro-Western neighbor, Georgia. The Black Sea Fleet participated in the conflict, and Ukrainian officials infuriated Russia by suggesting its ships might not be allowed to return to Sevastopol.

    Tensions flared again this summer when Ukrainian police stopped Russian trucks three times for transporting missiles in Sevastopol without advance notice. Then came the episode with the bailiffs at Kherson Lighthouse, one of dozens of navigational markers along the Crimean coast that both Ukraine and the Russian fleet claim to own.

    Judges have tried to order the fleet to hand over various facilities before, with the Russians routinely refusing and bailiffs departing without incident. But this time, the fleet accused Ukraine of “penetrating the territory of a Russian military unit” and warned of “possible tragic consequences to such actions.”

    Vladimir Kazarin, the city’s deputy mayor, said the bailiffs stepped past a gate because no sentries were posted but quickly found the commanding officer, who asked them to wait while he sought instructions. Five minutes later, he returned with the soldiers who detained the bailiffs.

    “Relations with the fleet have generally been good,” Kazarin said. “But this just shows that people in Moscow are trying to find any excuse for conflict.”