Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has written an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal on the plight of the Crimean Tatars. Here's an excerpt:
May marks a cruel anniversary in Ukraine. Seventy-three years ago this month, more than 240,000 ethnic Tatars were deported from Crimea. The still-fresh historical wound has since been reopened, with Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian territory in 2014 and Moscow’s continued repression of the Tatar community.
The 1944 deportation, personally supervised by Stalin, was one of the most rapid and brutal in history. The Crimean Tatars were given just 30 minutes to gather their most personal belongings before being whisked away by car to train stations from which they were sent to the eastern regions of the Soviet Union.
The lack of accommodation and food there, the hostile climate and the rapid spread of diseases resulted in the deaths of almost half the total number that had been forced from their homes. In 1956, many Crimean Tatars were released from the “Special Settlement Camps.” But it wasn’t until 1991, after Ukraine gained independence, that the ban on the Tatars returning to their native land was finally lifted.
In an effort to restore a remnant of its empire, Russia has recently resorted to using repressive politics against the pro-Ukrainian Crimean Tatars, who oppose most vocally the Kremlin’s land grab on the peninsula. This time, Russia isn’t systematically removing the entire Crimean Tatar population. Instead, it is using fear, intimidation and coercion to force them out.
Prominent Crimean Tatar politicians have been exiled, imprisoned and subjected to psychological abuse. Ilmi Umerov, the deputy chairman of the Tatars’ legislative body, has said that “Russia must be forced to leave Crimea and Donbas.” For these outspoken words, he has been forcibly committed to punitive psychiatry. That, of course, was another of Stalin’s favorite methods.
To resist Russia’s human-rights abuses, Ukraine has joined the international campaign “Let My People Go” and called for the release of Mr. Umerov and others imprisoned illegally. But he still faces criminal charges for “calling for the violation of the territorial integrity of Russia.”
Read the entire article here.