18 May 2014

Today marks the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars. In Bakhchisaray (Crimea), during an assembly on Lenin square commemorating the ocassion, two military helicopters began to circle the assembled gathering and continued to fly low during the entire somber event. As noted previously, the self-proclaimed prime minister of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov has banned all mass events on the annexed peninsula until June 6. However, he has granted permission for the Crimean Tatars to organize a public meeting today at a Muslim cemetery.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called on the international community to put an end to Russian aggression against Ukraine and to support the Crimean Tatars, who find themselves in a difficult situation in the annexed Crimea.

In Kyiv, Mykhailivska square was filled with Crimean Tatar community members and other Ukrainians for a commemoration ceremony. As part of the event, the contours of the Crimean peninsula, the number 70, the contours of the Crimean Tatar Tamga national symbol and the words ‘No genocide’ were formed from candles. The Head of the Crimean Tatar Medjlis Mustafa Dzhemilev that was recently banned entry to Crimea, MP Oles Doniy, and famous political Vasyl Ovsiyenko took part in the gathering.

Today commemorates the following:

The deportation began on 18 May 1944 in all Crimean-inhabited localities. More than 32,000 NKVD troops participated in this action. The forced deportees were given only 30 min to gather personal belongings, after which they were loaded onto cattle trains and moved out of Crimea. 193,865 Crimean Tatars were deported, 151,136 of them to Uzbek SSR, 8,597 to Mari ASSR, 4,286 to Kazakh SSR, the rest 29,846 to the various oblasts of Russian SFSR. At the same moment, most of the Crimean Tatar men who were fighting in the ranks of the Red Army were demobilized and sent into forced labor camps in Siberia and in the Ural mountain region. The deportation was poorly planned and executed; local authorities in the destination areas were not properly informed about the scale of the matter and did not receive enough resources to accommodate the deportees. The lack of accommodation and food, the failure to adapt to new climatic conditions and the rapid spread of diseases had a heavy demographic impact during the first years of exile.

According to historians, more than 40% of the Crimean Tatars died from intolerable conditions, from hunger and disease. Out of 423,000 deported, some 195,000 died during the transport and the first 18 months of life in the special settlements.