Petition calls on German Bundestag to recognize Soviet crimes against Crimea’s Indigenous people – Crimean Tatars

The Crimea Platform is urging people to sign a petition on the Bundestag website calling for the German Bundestag to recognize the deportation of Crimea’s Indigenous people – the Crimeans (Crimean Tatars) – on May 18, 1944, as an act of genocide.

The Crimea Platform has published instructions on how to sign the petition.

The Crimea Platform highlighted that Soviet troops forcibly deported approximately 200,000 women, elderly, and children in cattle cars at gunpoint from their native lands to remote areas of Central Asia and Siberia.

Over 46% of the Crimeans (Crimean Tatars) perished from hunger, disease, forced labour, and inhumane living conditions within the first few years following the deportation.

Subsequently, Soviet leadership issued decrees abolishing their national autonomy. They renamed more than 90% of historical toponyms, including cities, villages, rivers, mountains, and lakes, many of which still bear these fictitious names today. Additionally, Soviet authorities destroyed cultural and historical heritage sites, burned libraries, and demolished cemeteries.

Read also: 80 Years of Pain: Ukraine calls for recognition of 1944 Crimean Tatar genocide on 80th anniversary

“80 years after this tragic date, we are calling on the global community and all civilized countries to acknowledge the plight of the Crimeans (Crimean Tatars) and to recognize the deportation of a people, who were targeted based on their ethnicity through a deliberate policy, as genocide,” the statement of the Crimea Platform reads.

Earlier, the Ukrainian parliament called for global recognition of the 1944 Crimean Tatar deportation as genocide.