Home, Sweet Home...

Sixty-one years ago the Crimean Tatars were deported from the peninsula. The same destiny awaited the Crimean Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greeks on June 24, 1944, whereas the local Germans had been exiled earlier, in August 1941.

This year the Crimea has seen commemorative rallies and other events on an unprecedented scale. The heads of the Verkhovna Rada and the Council of Ministers, representatives of the president, the Symferopol City Council, and civic organizations laid flowers beneath the commemorative plaques put up in Symferopol in the places where the deportees boarded trains in 1944. The Ukrainian Drama Theater hosted a public mourning ceremony featuring speeches by the Crimean parliament Speaker Borys Deich, government head Anatoliy Matviyenko, and MP Refat Chubarov.

Commemorative meetings, exhibitions, ceremonies, and marches were held last Wednesday in all the Crimean cities and villages where the Tatars, including repatriates, reside: Yevpatoriya, Feodosiya, Sudak, Kerch, Sevastopol, Bakhchisarai, et al. A monument to the victims of the 1944 deportation was unveiled in the village of Kolchuhino, Symferopol district. Created by the Crimea-based sculptor Ilmi Ametov, it is a 5m-high stele of white compressed limestone crowned with the tamga, the national emblem of the Crimean Tatars.

The stele bears a carved inscription in the Crimean Tatar language: “It is good to return home from a strange land, it is good to burn for the people.” The money for this monument was donated by the residents of the villages of Kolchuhino, Prudove, and Rivnopilne, all governed by the Kolchuhino village council.

Early on the morning of May 18, five columns of the Crimean Tatars (not three as in previous years) set out for Symferopol’s central square. They held rallies in front of the memorials in Salhirka Park next to Symferopol’s railway station. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people gathered at the city’s central square by 2:00 p.m. The Crimean Mufti Emirali Ablayev conducted the duwa, a Muslim remembrance prayer for the deportation victims. The mourning rally was addressed by Crimean officials, the head of Istanbul’s Crimean Tatar community, representatives of foreign delegations, politicians, and public figures. A resolution was passed, demanding the restoration of the Crimean Tatars’ political, economic, national, and property rights.

President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine said in Bakhchisarai that he was a “partner” of the Crimean Tatars but urged them to drop the idea of ethnic-based statehood, because this would require making amendments to the 1991 Declaration on the Sovereignty of the Crimean Tatar People. Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev said in reply, “Our goal is not to create a separate Crimean Tatar state. Our aim is to restore Crimean Tatar national autonomy as part of Ukraine.” Refat Chubarov reminded the president that, while adopting the aforesaid declaration, the kurultai (people’s council — Ed.) was guided by international law and UN conventions. Hence, the Crimean Tatars see no reason why this document should be amended. Mr. Dzhemilev also noted that he does not mind that the Crimean administrative bodies comprise representatives of all ethnic minorities, “but the Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people and the masters of this land, not an ethnic minority that by force of historical reasons is now numerically small in the Crimea. All our demands, including staff placement, are based on this factor. The Crimean Tatars should be represented in local government bodies proportionally to their percentage in the Crimean population.”

The Crimean Tatar leader asked President Yushchenko to amend the provision “On the Council of Crimean Tatar Representatives under the President of Ukraine,” which unambiguously declares that the role of this council is to be played by the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people. Mr. Dzhemilev urged the president to help restore the original names of Crimean Tatar cities and villages, submit to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine two laws, “On the Status of the Crimean Tatar People” and “On Restoring the Rights of Those Deported on Ethnic Grounds,” and introduce amendments to the Constitution of the Crimean Autonomous Republic about granting equality to the Crimean Tatar language, on par with the official one, throughout the peninsula’s territory. It was also suggested that the Ukrainian parliament pass an amendment to the law “On Elections to the Verkhovna Rada of the Crimean Autonomous Republic,” which would guarantee Crimean Tatar representation in the autonomy’s parliament and thus enable them to have a considerable impact on the resolution of Tatar-related problems. The participants also raised such questions as recognition in Ukraine of the degrees awarded by Turkish universities to Crimean Tatar students, unbiased hearings of court cases involving Crimean Tatars, and an allotment of land in Kyiv to build a Crimean Tatar cultural center.

At the Ukrainian president’s demand, the National Security and Defense Council, the Crimean parliament and government have declared a moratorium on the distribution of land until the latter has been fully inventoried. The Crimean Tatars have repeatedly maintained that they are tired of waiting for the resolution of pressing problems, including land, in the 15 years since they were repatriated. In Mr. Chubarov’s view, the authorities have been unjustifiably denying the Crimean Tatars land plots on the Crimea’s southern coast. According to NKVD reports cited at the commemorative rally in Symferopol, 10,322 Crimean Tatars were deported from Yalta and 15,107 from Alushta on May 18, 1944. Whereas before WWII the Crimean Tatars accounted for 70- 80% of the southern coastal population, the number of Tatars ranges from 0.5% to 2-3% in many cities and villages. Crimean premier Matviyenko said that “the moratorium in no way impedes the resolution of the Crimean Tatars’ and other repatriates’ land problem. We want to do all this transparently. And when we do this, we will no longer have anarchy in the land question or conflict. Everything must be done transparently and according to the law.”

The May 1944 nightmare affected the destiny of entire nations over several generations. Today Ukraine is doing its best to restore justice and provide assistance to the victims and their descendants. The Program for the Resettlement and Socio-Cultural Development of the Deported Crimean Citizens for 2005 has received UAH 61.3 million from the national budget and UAH 21.3 million from the Crimean budget, including, in the latter case, UAH 16.1 million for capital construction and 5.2 million for socio-cultural needs.

“We are grateful to Ukraine for allocating by no means surplus funds to help Tatar and other deportees improve their amenities,” MP Mustafa Dzhemilev says, “but it must be admitted that not all Crimean Tatar families have managed to return and settle in their ancestral homeland during the 15 years of repatriation.”

In 1989-2004, 255,000 repatriates returned to the Crimea, including more than 250,000 Tatars and about 4,000 deported Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Germans. Since the repatriation began, Ukraine has earmarked over 800 million hryvnias for the repatriates’ needs, but the final solution of the problem will require an estimated 2 billion dollars or so.