Press release, 19.05.16
The Committee against Xenophobia conducted a rally in memory of the deported peoples at Krasnopresnenskaya Zastava Square on 18 May.

The rally gathered over 100 people, among them were the representatives of the deported peoples (including the representatives of the Moscow Crimean Tatar community) and human rights defenders.

Galina Mikhaleva, coordinater of the Committee Against Xenophobia and Moscow YABLOKO Deputy Chair, moderated the rally.

The rally was opened up with the song by Jamala, Eurovision 2016 winner, about the tragedy of Crimean Tatar’s deportation.

On 18-20 May, 1944, under Joseph Stalin’s order the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) troops drove together nearly all the Tatar population of Crimea – over 190 thousand people, mainly women, elderly people, children and disabled veterans – to railroad cars and sent them towards Uzbekistan by 70 echelons. This coercive eviction of the Tatars, who were accused of cooperation with the Nazi by the Soviet authorities, became one of the quickest deportations in world history.

“No estimation of the authorities’ actions against mass reprisals of the deported peoples has been given so far, therefore we claim that this issus must be considered. To do so a congress of the aggrieved peoples representatives should be convoked. But instead of observing the rights of the Crimean Tatars they are being violated constantly,” Mikhaleva said.

She reminded that the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People was holding an illegal position and a number of its representatives had been deported from their homeland. The actions in memory of the deportation are prohibited in Crimea.

YABLOKO Deputy Chair Alexander Gnezdilov connected the events which took place 72 years ago with the present.

“Peoples deportation, including the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, is not only a human tragedy, not only the death of tens and hundreds of thousands of people, including elderly people and children, it is the ground for political problems of today. Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean peoples, which has changed the population structure of the peninsula cardinally, in many respects planted a bomb which exploded in 2014. By remembering the events of 1944 we are laying the foundation for a peaceful solution of today’s problems and create the guarantees for new generations that such tragedies will not take place in the future,” he said.

A resolution which says that the Committee against Xenophobia and YABLOKO conduct anti-Slalin policy and stand for rehabilitation of the deported people’s was adopted at the rally.

The participants of the action demanded to stop ignoring the problems of the Crimean Tatars and other repressed peoples; establish a single deportation memorial day in Russia; conduct a congress of the deported peoples in Moscow which will define the main demands and policies of a special programme on state support of the deported peoples.