On Genocide Remembrance Day, Mejlis calls on international community to protect Indigenous rights, support Ukraine
Mass searches, arrests, politically motivated persecution – including the ban on the Mejlis – and enforced disappearances in Russian-occupied Crimea should be viewed as a continuation of Moscow’s genocidal practices against the Crimean Tatar people, Ukraine, and the Ukrainian nation, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People stated in its statement to mark Crimean Tatar Genocide Remembrance Day.
Illustrative image. “Moonlight Sonata (In Memory of the Victims of the Arabat Tragedy)” painting by Rustem EminovThe authors of the statement noted that history demonstrates a tragic continuity, as the Crimean Tatar people have once again become victims of repression and persecution.
“Preserving the memory of the crimes of genocide – the Holodomor and Sürgünlikі – committed by the USSR’s communist regime in the 20th century is not only a moral duty to honor the memory of millions of victims, but also a legal prerequisite for preventing the recurrence of such crimes in the future and ensuring the inevitability of punishment for those currently committing war crimes and crimes against humanity on the territory of Ukraine,” they said.
Among other things, the Mejlis called on the world to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples, particularly the Crimean Tatar people, in accordance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
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Peoples are considered Indigenous if they live in multi-ethnic societies of independent countries and are descendants of those who inhabited these territories during the period of conquest, colonization, or the establishment of current state borders. In 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples because, according to the organization, 370 million people in more than 70 countries belong to such groups, and many of them face extinction
In Ukraine, the Law on Indigenous Peoples was adopted back in 2021. The mere registration of the corresponding bill in the Verkhovna Rada sparked outrage in Russia because it did not mention “Russians.” Russians, as it is known, have their own state.
To provide background, the deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea took place between May 18 and 20, 1944. Over the course of two days, Soviet security forces forcibly relocated up to 194,000 people from the peninsula.
The Verkhovna Rada recognized the deportation as a genocide of the Crimean Tatar people through a separate resolution, and in 2019, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea indicted the former leadership of the USSR for committing it.
ZMINA previously reported on how the descendants of Crimean Tatars deported in 1944 are forced to relive this experience once again due to the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.
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