February 12, 2015

Feb. 18, 1979

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Thirty-six years ago, on February 18, 1979, The Ukrainian Weekly featured news about the arrest of Crimean Tatar activist Mustafa Dzhemilev, 35.  The arrest was made on February 7, 1979, in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, when Mr. Dzhemilev was accused of violations of passport regulations.

“The arrest of the seriously ill Mustafa means certain death for him,” said Gen. Petro Grigorenko, who had spoken in defense of the Crimean Tatar. “We appeal to you to save his life,” the general and his family state in telegrams to President Jimmy Carter and George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO. “His arrest causes great grief for the entire Crimean Tatar nation and the entire rights defense movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” Gen. Grigorenko said in a statement.

The general’s statement added that Mr. Dzhemilev was under constant surveillance after his release from a concentration camp 13 months prior, with his movements restricted, even in the city of Tashkent, where he was forced to live.

After his detention in the concentration camp, he was told that he had the right to find himself a place of permanent residence. He wanted to return to Crimea, but Soviet officials waited for Mr. Dzhemilev at the airport in Tashkent and arrested him on the spot.

Mr. Dzhemilev had led a campaign to allow the return of Crimean Tatars to their homeland since they were exiled from Crimea by Stalin in 1944. Soon after his arrest, he renounced his Soviet citizenship and applied to emigrate to the United States. In a statement to Western reporters, Mr. Dzhemilev explained his actions based on harassment by police since his release from a labor camp after being charged with “anti-Soviet slander” in 1977.

Now, Mr. Dzhemilev, who went on a hunger strike for 303 days to protest his 1975 arrest and had to be force-fed through a feeding tube, has advised imprisoned Ukrainian pilot Lt. Nadiya Savchenko – who is illegally being held by Russia – to end her hunger strike that is stretching beyond 60 days.  Mr. Dzhemilev stopped his hunger strike at the request of Andrei Sakharov, who wrote him a postcard, saying that Mr. Dzhemilev had done everything that he could and “now please stop your hunger strike because your death will only please your enemies.”

In light of Lt. Savchenko’s deteriorating health, Mr. Dzhemilev said:

“…Nadiya has already achieved what could be achieved. I believe that she should stop because Russia is the aggressor; it is not a country ruled by humane principles. In the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts they are scattering children’s toys filled with explosives. These are people who have crossed permissible limits.

“She must save her life in order to be freed and to fight Russia in other ways. We hope that imprisonment will not last long. We will have prisoner exchanges; we will continue demanding her release.”

Sources: “Grigorenko protests arrest of Dzhemilev,” The Ukrainian Weekly, February 18, 1979. Ukrinform, February 10.

 

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