Head of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, Head of the Department of Legal Affairs and Foreign Affairs of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Eskender Bariiev during his speech at a round table on the topic Deportations, mass repressions, artificial famine: tools of the policy of totalitarian regimes of the 20th and 21st centuries of the people and the genocide of the Ukrainian political nation.
“The Crimean Tatar people became a minority in their homeland, as a result of a deliberate policy of genocide after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783, which culminated in the forcible deportation of the Crimean Tatar people. This policy has been going on since 2014 – the beginning of the occupation of Crimea by Russia”,- Bariiev stressed.
The expert noted that with the start of Russia's full-scale military aggression against Ukraine, the world has witnessed the continuation of the genocide against the entire people of Ukraine. The Head of the Board of the CTRC drew the following parallels between the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people and the modern genocide of the Ukrainian political nation:
1. The Crimean Tatar people were accused of collaborating with the Nazi occupants and carried out a special operation, thus they were totally deported from Crimea, and at the present stage, under the slogans of denazification and demilitarization, the occupants launched the so-called special operation, and in fact the genocide of the people of Ukraine;
2. In the list of peoples of the USSR, there was no such people as the Crimean Tatars, and since the beginning of the occupation in 2014, Russian propagandists began to call the Crimean Tatar people – the Tatar diaspora, Tatars, I want to remind you that on the eve of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin and his propagandists expressed doubt in their statements in the existence of Ukrainians as a nation, and Ukraine as a state;
3. As in 1944, representatives of the NKVD carried out illegal entry into housing, stole property, took away houses, used physical force, already in 2022 the Russian army makes illegal entry into the housing of Ukrainians, robs, rapes women, kills men;
4. The Crimean Tatar people, mostly elderly people, women and children, were forcibly deported to the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia, now the occupants have deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, mainly to remote places in Russia;
5. From 1944 to 1956, the Crimean Tatar people were in special settlements, thus for another 12 years they were limited in freedom, today deported Ukrainian citizens are placed in filtration camps, we know about 66 such objects, people's passports are taken away, they are limited in their rights.
There are many such examples.
They did not condemn yesterday – it is repeated today!
We must stop this!