“Hostages of the Occupation”: Zera Bekirova, former editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Yañı Dünya”, publicist, member of the Writers Union of Ukraine (photo)

The Crimean Tatar Resource Center continues a series of publications about the stories and destinies of Crimean Tatar families, which were prepared within the framework of the project “Hostages of the Occupation”. The next hero is Zera Bekirova, a former editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Yañı Dünya”, a publicist, a member of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine. After the occupation of Crimea, her life changed – the journalist was forced to leave the newspaper which she devoted thirty years of her life. However, Zera Bekirova does not leave her creative and research activities. He writes a lot and dreams of visiting all, even the most remote, corners of the world where Crimean Tatars reside, to see how and what they live for, to tell them that they are a part of a proud great people.

Over the years of her work in the Crimean Tatar newspaper “Yañı Dünya” (former “Lenin Bairagy” from 1957 to 1991), she traveled to Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland, where the large diaspora of Crimean Tatars lives. She studied the problem of preserving identity, language, and folklore in a foreign state. She is greatly respected within the diaspora, presented reports at numerous international academic conferences, wrote books and scholarly articles, and was preparing to defend her dissertation.

After 2014, she began to receive reprimands from the State Committee that financed the newspaper for giving commentaries to “hostile” media, for traveling to conferences, for holding a photo exhibition in the Turkish city of Eskisehir (although the event took place during her vacation time). And then open pressure, denunciations, coercion to leave the newspaper, to which she devoted thirty years of her life.

Over the past year, Zera Bekirova recorded more than a hundred eyewitness accounts of deportation, most of which were included in her book “75 destinies of deportation”, she visited places of special settlement of Crimean Tatars in the Republic of Mari El, in the Urals. She also tracked down the descendants of the Crimean Tatar nobles in Azerbaijan, where the Murza and Crimean Tatar intelligentsia found refuge from repression in the 1927-37s

“Crimea is my home, my husband was convicted four times for participating in the return. This is the land of my ancestors, this is the place where my children were born. Only here I feel strong, happy, and needed,” says Zera Bekirova.

She dreams of visiting all, even the most remote, corners of the world where Crimean Tatars reside, to see how and what they live for, to tell them that they are a part of a proud great people.

Project manager: Zarema Bariieva
Author of pictures: Lieniara Abibulaieva
Text writer: Alemkhan Sary
Translation into English: Zarema Bariieva

We remind that on February 26 in Kyiv, the presentation of the album and the exhibition “Hostages of the Occupation” took place, which tell us about the fate of 20 Crimean Tatar families after the annexation of the peninsula. On March 10, the exhibition opened in Vinnytsia. The exhibition is expected to be presented in Lviv and Dnipro as well.

The project was prepared by the Crimean Tatar Resource Center with the support of the Democracy Grants Program of the US Embassy to Ukraine.