The Tatars are a Turkic people who have lived in Crimea for centuries. The Soviet regime headed by Joseph Stalin slandered them as Nazi collaborators and deported the entire population — some 200,000 people — to Uzbekistan, Siberia and the Urals. Nearly half “perished in the first two years after the deportation due to terrible living conditions,” Mustafa Dzhemilev told university students in Kiev, Ukraine, May 18. “The ones who survived started their struggle to return to the homeland.”

Dzhemilev is a historic leader of that fight and the former head of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar assembly. He was banished from Crimea following the Russian annexation last year, as was the current head of the Mejlis, Refat Chubarov. “Now there is an air of fear in Crimea,” Dzhemilev said. Since the occupation “18 people disappeared and only three were found. The rest are likely to be dead.” Other opponents of the occupation have been arrested.

The only Crimean Tatar TV station, ATR, was forced off the air in April. It broadcasts “in three languages: mostly Russian, partly Crimean Tatar, and often a little Ukrainian, which annoyed the occupiers very much,” he said.

Last year 20,000 Tatars defied a ban and rallied May 18 in Simferopol. Since then repression has increased, and as many as 20,000 Tatars have left Crimea. Nevertheless, dozens of youth lit Chinese lanterns in Simferopol May 17. Commemorations of the deportations also took place in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine, and outside the Russian Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.