Vol. 80/No. 20 May 23, 2016
Ban on Crimea Tatar council is ‘declaration of war’
The move is the most serious in an escalating offensive to intimidate and silence the Tatars’ opposition to Moscow’s occupation of Crimea and their fight for political rights. It is “a declaration of war against the Crimean Tatars,” said Mustafa Dzhemilev, a historic leader of the fight for national rights and former head of the Mejlis.
The Tatars, a Turkic people who were among Crimea’s earliest inhabitants, today comprise some 12 percent of the peninsula’s population. May 18 will be the 72nd anniversary of the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population on orders of then Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, who slandered them en masse as agents of Adolf Hitler during World War II. Almost half of the population of 200,000 died in the forced journey to Uzbekistan and other parts of the Soviet Union in 1944. Tatars began to return to Crimea in large numbers in the 1990s.
Tartars overwhelmingly supported a united, sovereign Ukraine and opposed the March 2014 military takeover of Crimea by thousands of Russian troops after the ouster of pro-Moscow Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych by popular protests. Under agreements dating back to the days of the Soviet Union, Moscow already had some 26,000 soldiers based in Crimea. A referendum for “independence” at gunpoint was used to justify the annexation of the peninsula by Moscow.
The big majority of Crimean Tatars refused to participate in the referendum. Moscow responded by barring Dzhemilev from his homeland. Met by 5,000 Tartars who came to greet him, Dzhemilev attempted to enter Crimea in May 2014 and was blocked by riot police. Two years later, no one has seen the document excluding him from Crimea, and the case against him remains a state secret.
The latest criminalization of the Mejlis is based on the Russian Law On Countering Extremist Activity. Natalya Poklonskaya, the Crimean prosecutor appointed by Russia, argued before the court that the Mejlis is supported by international terrorist organizations and aims to destroy Russia’s territorial integrity.
Last October Ruslan Balbek, deputy prime minister of Crimea, claimed that Dzhemilev was recruiting fighters for Islamic State in order to “later use their military experience for subversive activities in Crimea.” Dzhemilev, who has backed nonviolent resistance to Moscow for decades, said the slander “could not be further from the truth.”
The banning comes on top of police sieges of Crimean Tartar neighborhoods and raids on mosques, schools and homes. Frame-up charges, beatings and disappearances have become common.
Along with Dzhemilev, Mejlis leader Refat Chubarov is banned from Crimea for five years. It’s current leader, Akhtem Chiigoz, is imprisoned on frame-up charges of having organized “mass disturbances” in 2014, referring to the thousands who came out to meet Dzhemilev.
“There can be no understating how serious this move is,” wrote Halya Coynash of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group about the banning of the Mejlis. “Nobody is in any doubt of the real reason for this move, namely the implacable opposition of the Mejlis to Russian occupation.”
Russian officials, as part of justifying the banning of the Mejlis, point to a blockade of commercial traffic into Crimea from Ukraine initiated by Dzhemilev and other Tatar leaders last fall protesting the Russian annexation of the peninsula that attracted participation from the Right Sector and other rightist forces. The blockade petered out after unknown forces blew up electrical pylons that supplied power to Crimea. These actions gave Moscow a handle and set back the Crimean Tatars’ struggle.
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