Crimean Tatars gather in Symferopol to recall Stalin's mass deportations (05/23/04)

Crimean Tatars gather in Symferopol to recall Stalin's mass deportations

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

SYMFEROPOL, Ukraine - Speaking to journalists just before he was to address a crowd of nearly 30,000 Crimean Tatars who had gathered in Symferopol's central square to mark the 60th anniversary of the Stalin-ordered mass deportation of Tatars, Mustafa Jemilev, a national deputy in the Ukrainian Parliament and leader of the nearly 300,000 strong Crimean Tatar ethnic community in Ukraine, said that another injustice had just taken place.

"We have just determined who stands where and how some interests view our problems," explained Mr. Jemilev in response to news that Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada had again found itself unable to agree upon a law guaranteeing Crimean Tatars certain specific rights.

The draft bill fell a mere eight votes short of the 226-vote majority needed for passage. It was the fifth time over the last 10 years that the Verkhovna Rada had rejected draft legislation that would codify Crimean Tatar minority rights.

The latest setback was to a piece of legislation that had no politically controversial riders attached to it, as earlier ones had. That fact had led many lawmakers to believe they would be able to finally enumerate a special status for Crimean Tatars a dozen years after they had begun to return home to the Crimean Peninsula after an extended time in exile.

Nearly 200,000 of them - mostly women, children and the elderly - were shipped in 76 freight trains out of Crimea to Uzbekistan and Kazakstan by force over a three-day period beginning at 4 a.m. on May 18, 1944, after Joseph Stalin decided that the Crimean Tatar nation had sided with the Nazis in the "Great War for the Motherland." Thousands more, mostly hardy, work-aged men, were either drafted into military work battalions or sent off to Siberia. Sources say up to 90,000 died during the forced trek eastward and in the year afterward.

President Leonid Kuchma, speaking during a commemoration held in Kyiv at the Shevchenko Opera House, noted that within three days not only had 200,000 men, women and children been cleared from the Crimean Peninsula but no trace of their centuries-long existence on that land remained: not a single mosque, no Crimean Tatar schools or books written in the native language. A 25-million book library had been destroyed, cemeteries had been uprooted and villages leveled.

To date some 265,000 Tatars have returned to Crimea, and more arrive each day as they decide that the opportunity to return to their native lands will lead to a better life than what they currently have in Uzbekistan. The draft bill rejected by the national deputies on this day would have given Crimean Tatars certain preferences regarding land rights, construction of homes, job opportunities, as well as guarantees of cultural, linguistic and religious freedoms.

Mr. Jemilev, who was born in Crimea in November 1943 and deported to Kazakstan with his family a half year later, told The Weekly that while the Ukrainian government had done much to assist the return and resettlement of the Crimean Tatars, his community needs to have its rights codified because two many issues remained unresolved between the new Crimean Tatar settlers and other inhabitants of Crimea.

"There is a huge lack of fairness regarding the land issue. Many Crimean Tatars who returned to their historic villages do not have the right to obtain land because they did not belong to collective farms on the territory of Ukraine," explained Mr. Jemilev.

He noted what he called a "particularly large problem" on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula, where Crimean Tatars occupied 70 percent of the land before their deportation. Today the land is considered lucrative real estate as Ukraine's tourist industry slowly develops. However, Crimean Tatar ownership is less than 1 percent.

Mr. Jemilev noted that he supported land squatting, a new phenomenon recently taken up by Crimean Tatars, in which families illegally reoccupy and adversarially hold pieces of the territory that they claimed prior to their deportation. Mr. Jemilev said that too often this is the only way the Crimean Tatars could secure their rights because neither the Kyiv central government nor regional authorities in Symferopol, the Crimean capital, had made a truly dedicated effort to accommodate the Crimean Tatars.

"Today we are trying to reach an understanding with the government. Where we get cooperation there are no grabs for property, but where the Crimean Tatars are being ignored and where land is being sold to Russian structures, there such methods are employed," explained Mr. Jemilev.

During the rally on Lenin Square - a name that the Communist-dominated Symferopol municipal government has not yet deemed necessary to change - thousands of young and old alike wearing traditional Crimean Tatar fezzes and head scarves listened to Mr. Jemilev and fellow Verkhovna Rada national deputies from the Our Ukraine faction, including the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Minority Rights, Hennadii Udovenko, assert the right of the Crimean Tatars to live on their ancestral lands.

They listened to representatives of the Crimean National Council, the Mejlis - speaking in their native Turkic - call for the return of the land plots that were confiscated after their deportation and handed to ethnic Russians who were invited to come to live in their homes.

Their hands gently extended and their palms pointed skyward, the gathered throng also chanted a Muslim prayer, led by Mufti Emirali Ablaievym, their spiritual leader.

Many in Crimea had expected emotional demonstrations and even violence after several altercations between Crimean Tatar and ethnic Russian youth, blamed by many on the Russians, in the last several weeks. Throughout the day rumors ran rampant that members of the quasi-military organization UNA-UNSO, were in town to support the Crimean Tatars in a fight with ethnic Russians. However, no conflict ensued, and people dispersed peaceably at the end of the two-hour rally.

The Crimean Autonomous Parliament had declared May 18 a day of sorrow and remembrance. Many shops were closed, classes did not take place, and no alcohol was allowed to be sold until after 5 p.m.

The day began with the laying of commemorative wreaths at several sites around the city where memorials to the deportation had been erected, including Grigorenko Park, named for Petro Grigorenko, a Soviet general-turned-dissident who had supported the Crimean Tatars' quest for a return to their native land during the Soviet era.

The largest ceremony took place before the Symferopol train station, where the physical deportation of the Crimean Tatar nation had begun on the morning of May 18, 1944. In a park before the train station, some 7,000 Crimean Tatars assembled for informal prayers, which were followed by a rally led by regional leaders of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis.

At the appointed time, the group organized itself into columns and began the one-kilometer march to Lenin Square, where it met up with five other columns entering the city center from various directions, waving both the state flag of Ukraine and the Crimean Tatar national flag.

The previous day Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had participated in the unveiling of another monument, this one to the Memory of the Rebirth of the Crimean Tatar Nation, at the Crimean University of Pedagogy and Engineering, which was erected by the Crimean Tatars as a thank-you to the Ukrainian and Uzbek nations for their humanity and the support given the Crimean Tatars.

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