Tolerance

The expulsion of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 must be recognized as genocide.

This declared the chairman of the Mejlis Mustafa Dzhemilev speaking in Kiev at the Round Table of the Security Service of Ukraine concerning “Deportation of Crimean Tatars: historical and legal assessment”.

“Already in the 18^th century the Crimea was captured by Russian troops, at that time also began the ethnical cleaning. The Tatars were simply forced to leave their territory. But the Bolsheviks used even more radical methods. All of the Tatars were evicted. The formal reason was the resolution of the State Defense Committee that the Crimean Tatars during the Second World War cooperated with the Nazis. The absurdity of this accusation is obvious as at the beginning of the war the whole male population regardless of their attitude towards the Soviet system was mobilized for the Soviet Army”, Dzhemilev began his speech by listing historical events.

“In the Crimea were left mostly children, women and old people. Some months after the Crimean Tatars in August and also before that about 50.000 Germans from the Volgaregion were evicted, even before the beginning of the war – so there wasn’t anything to blame them with at all – and after the deportation of the Crimean Tatars were evicted the Greek, the Armenians and the Bulgarians” he continued.

“We consider all these crimes as a crime which should be classified as genocide. The settlers were placed into appalling conditions. Even according to the official KGB information on the number of deaths within a period of six months about 38% were killed, but the highest mortality was during the first two years. And according to our data it was 46%”, said Dzhemilev.

“There are indications that after the deportation there was ethnical cleaning, and not a movement of the Soviet authorities which dictated some strategic considerations; the fact is that all the cultural heritage of the Crimean Tatars was destroyed. All spiritual and religious monuments on the territory of the Crimea, and the books just as in the times of Inquisition were burned.

Together with them were even burned the works of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, if they stood in our libraries and homes, because they were written in the Crimean Tatar language”, he points out.

“All settlements were renamed into the Russian language. Even cemeteries were destroyed – razed to the ground and from the tombstones were made sidewalks and pigsties.

In short, this was not hidden as it was written in the press that it is the task of the Party and the government to make the Crimea a pure Russian region of the Soviet Union”, asserts the chairman of the Meijlis.

“For many years we were fighting for the return to our historic fatherland and after the return the problem arose that there should be given an assessment of this crime by the Ukrainian State.

In 2005 in the national council of the Crimean Tatars was taken the decision that we will ensure that this crime is classified as what it is: genocide. And we are grateful that the governing bodies of the Ukraine, in the first place the president, charged a commission with this crime.

This is not about finding the responsible persons and punishing them. But a rule-governed state as the Ukraine has to give a legal assessment of the genocide. It will also contribute to the restoration of justice as well as to the improvement of the political climate on the territory of the Crimean peninsula and in the Ukraine. It will put an end to the different false rumors around this issue”, concluded Dzhemilev.

Source: www.nr2.ru