Press Release, 18.05.2014

A rally in memory of the deported ethnic groups on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of deportation of the Crimean Tatars took place in Moscow on May 18. The rally was organised by the Committee Against Xenophobia and the YABLOKO party. The participants of the action paid tribute to the memory of the Crimean Tatars and the other ethnic groups who were forcibly resettled from their native land in Joseph Stalin’s time and demanded to establish the Day of Deported Ethnic Groups

More than 250 participated in the action including representatives of the deported ethnic groups, human rights advocates, YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin, First Deputy Chair of the Moscow branch of YABLOKO Galina Mikhaleva and YABLOKO’s activists. The participants of the rally spoke about the admissibility of the “creeping” rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin and attempts to implement his methods of governing today.

“Today is the 70th anniversary of the Crimean Tatars deportation,” reminded Galina Mikhaleva in the beginning of her speech. “Seventy years ago the agents of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs gathered nearly all the Crimean Tatars including the elderly people and children, entrained them into the calves’ carriages and sent to Central Asia.”

Chekism is fascism. The deportation of ethnic groups, provocations, repressions, murders, tortures…

After that 20 percent of the Crimean Tatars population died every year. Galina Mikhaleva mentioned that despite the partial rehabilitation in Nikita Khrushchev’s time the Tatars hadn’t been allowed to return to their native territory. Mikhaleva also reminded that the Crimean Tatars hadn’t been the only victims of Stalin’s repressive policy therefore the rally was devoted to all the deported ethnic groups.

Galina Mikhaleva and Usman Baratov

“More than 30 ethnic groups have been deported under different pretences. In total more than 6 million people suffered,” declared Galina Mikhaleva.

Sergei Mitrokhin said that on the 70th anniversary of deportation the authorities had treated the Crimean Tatars in the spirit of Stalin and decided their fate without permission by joining them to the Russian Federation. After that the status of the Tatars in the region hadn’t improved but had become worse. The prohibition of rallies at the territory of the peninsula and a refusal to let leader of the Crimean Tatars Mustafa Dzemilev to the Crimea was also a move into the negative direction.

Sergei Mitrokhin

According to Mitrokhin, we could observe the attempts of the creeping rehabilitation of Stalin within Russia.

“On May 9 we’ve seen the portraits of Stalin and Beria at Red Square. Yes, the authorities are afraid to accept these old symbols openly so far but we can see the way they[the authorities] become more affable to these symbols. They want to gradually rehabilitate Stalin and Beria as actually they want to carry nearly one and the same policy”, said YABLOKO leader.

Sergei Mitrokhin mentioned that the goal of those who came to the rally was to accept that challenge and not to let the deportation take place again.
In his speech Sergei Mitrokhin reminded that not only the repressed ethnic groups had suffered prosecution in Stalin’s time but the Russians as well. He reminded about the destruction of a significant part of peasantry.

Representative of the Civil Federation movement, member of the Committee Against Xenophobia Igor Bakirov supported Mitrokhin’s point of view. “We actually see the way national groups are announced enemies of the state and let’s hope that this rally will show the authorities that the practice of deportation is impossible in the future,” said the activist.

“When one of our relatives dies that hurts us. Can you imagine the sorrow, the amount of destroyed fates and non-started families when the deportation took place?” declared head of the Crimean Tatars community in Moscow Mustafa Mukhtermov and also added that apart from the deported ethnic groups one shouldn’t forget about those who had been subjected to repression in Stalin’s time, whose number is impossible to count.

Head of the cross-regional Uzbel community “Vatandosh” Usman Baratov said that such actions traditionally used to take place in Simferopol but that time when the authorities had prohibited street actions the rally had been conducted in Moscow which was unique.

Semilia Khanu Izidinova who was born in a cattle carriage and suffered all the difficulties of the deportation spoke about what she had gone through.

“The soldiers of Lieutenant General Anton Denikin [the White movement] who had been deported even before the World War II started took my mother and father to their place and allowed them to live and work in a hen house. The temperature there was 50 degrees above zero and there were planty of snakes but we didn’t lose hope to return to our motherland,” said the representative of the Crieman Tatars community. In 1975 her parents returned to the Crimea.

The participant of the events which took place 70 years ago Aslan Adalov said that it was incorrect to consider the word “deportation” only as resettlement as most often it was about the death of people and broken fates.

“Now they say that the deportation had taken place within two days, actually it happened in 15 minutes. The agents of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs came in and said, “the cars are waiting for you, go and don’t take anything with you”. My mother took a sack of flour, that was all,” said the deported man. Lots of the deported people died from hunger on the way to the new place.

The participants of the rally adopted a resolution demanding from the authoroties to pay tribute to the memory of the deported ethnic groups, to find the Soviet authorities guilty of this crime, to establish the Day of Deported Ethnic Groups and to open a monument in memory of the deported ethnic groups as well.

Lev Ponomaryov, a well-known human rights advocate

The Committee Against Xenophobia members and representatives of public organisations proposed to creat the Public observation comission on the Crimea aiming to carry independent monitoring of respect for human rights in the region.