Crimea's Tatar minority supports Ukrainian statehood despite difficult living conditions (03/15/98)

Crimea's Tatar minority supports Ukrainian statehood
despite difficult living conditions

by Nathan Hodge

BAKHCHESARAI, Ukraine - In Crimea, which has been embroiled in political turmoil since the advent of Ukrainian independence, international attention remains focused on the autonomous republic's Russian population and its resistance to Ukrainian rule. For the peninsula's minority Tatar population, however, the experience of exile has created vocal support for Ukrainian statehood.

On a tour of the Crimean Tatar capital of Bakhchesarai, Lutfi Osman, director of the Rebirth of Crimea Foundation, showed one of the few architectural remnants of the Crimean Khanate. "The irony," he says, "is that, if a Russian national poet had not written about the fountains of Bakhchesarai, the Soviets would have demolished the khan's palace as well." Then referring to the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the wake of World War II, he noted that "it was rumored to be a rehearsal for Stalin's wish to deport the entire Ukrainian populace."

Regardless of the motive, the Soviets succeeded in eradicating most monuments to Tatar culture in Crimea: they changed place names, abolished the Tatar language and occupied traditional settlements. In a single draconian act, Soviet security forces nearly eradicated an entire people from memory. The operation was ruthlessly efficient: between May 18 and 20, 1944, they succeeded in deporting the Tatars en masse to Central Asia. Exact figures are not available, but an estimated 50,000-100,000 perished during the ordeal.

Following long-delayed "rehabilitation" by the state, the Tatars energetically took to resettling their native lands: to date, at least 250,000 Tatars have returned to Crimea, mostly from Uzbekistan. And, although the Tatars have a reputation as the most insistent supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty in Crimea, more bitter irony lies in the fact that the majority of returnees do not enjoy Ukrainian citizenship. Of a population of at least 250,000, less than 100,000 will be able to participate in the forthcoming elections.

"Tatar participation is even more urgent," noted Mr. Osman, "when the mayor of Moscow is grandstanding in Sevastopol, calling for reunion with Russia."

The obstacles to Tatar voting rights are clear: the prohibitive cost of relinquishing Uzbek citizenship ($100 U.S.), the persistence of the "propyska" (official registration and designation of place of residence) system, and official inertia in the Crimea. However, inaction on the part of the Verkhovna Rada to provide timely measures for granting citizenship also is greatly to blame.

In addition to downgrading the Ministry for Nationalities and Migration to the status of a state committee, the central government also has been slow to provide material assistance to resettled Tatars. Futhermore, when the Tatars began their homeward migration in earnest, they encountered strong resistance from local elites in Crimea and the population at large. Local administrations denied land for new houses and bulldozed squatter communities.

The Tatar Mejlis (Assembly), however, remained committed to peaceful resettlement. "As opposed to the Chechens, no one showed up in the middle of the night to evict the Russians," said Aider Seitosman, the director of the Tatar youth organization Yashlik. He added, "We always avoided the path of confrontation." Most here credit Mustafa Jemilev, one-time political prisoner and head of the Mejlis for persisting in the cause of peaceful resettlement.

Many of the new arrivals initially built their homes from the foundation up. With the 1992 inflation crisis, savings became worthless overnight and construction ground to a halt. To this day, most of the resettled population lives in appalling circumstances, in settlements that can be best described as Third-World shanties. A typical settlement lacks electricity and running water and the ramshackle, poorly heated houses are accessible only by mud-mired roads.

In the habitable corner of one house, a group of Tatars greets guests with a simple meal of green tea and small pastries stuffed with spiced lamb. The host explained: "We never called it resettlement, we simply call it return. Life in Uzbekistan always seemed temporary - our parents never let us forget that we had a home in Crimea." He surveyed his house: "I had grand designs to build a good home. We sold everything to come here, and now I am the only one under this roof who can vote."

This hospitality does little to mask the grave decline in the health of the population that life in the settlements brings. The lack of adequate sanitation brings the usual rise in infectious diseases, but, as health care workers in the region note, the lack of adequate building materials may have had an even more insidious effect on their children's health. Refat Memetov, the chairman of Evlyad, a support group for parents of children with leukemia, says that once the supply of affordable building materials dwindled, families bought cheap stone, brick and mortar from soldiers - some of which may have been transported from irradiated zones.

"At the time," said Mr. Memetov, "people didn't stop to question the origin of construction materials - if it was cheap and available, we bought it." Shortly thereafter, Crimea witnessed a sharp rise in infant leukemia, from 2.5 cases per 10,000 children to 4.5 per 10,000 by 1995. According to Dr. Valentyn Usachenko, a leading hematologist in Crimea, this statistical rise is reflected in geographic "spikes" that some believe reflects a correspondence between contamination and the new settlements. In Symferopol, for instance, the number of children with acute leucosis doubled between 1991 and 1995.

With slim resources, groups such as Evlyad have managed to provide treatment for sick children as well as physician training in critical areas such as hematology. Much of the aid is cobbled together from private sponsors in Turkey and Poland. On many occasions, groups have relied on medication hand-carried by Mr. Jemilev into Ukraine. These parents' initiatives are not exclusionary: of the 80 children sponsored by Evlyad only 36 have been Tatar. As Mr. Memetov observed, "there were cases when Russian parents had opposed our settlement - until their children fell ill."

With world attention focused on potential conflict in the Crimean region, international bodies such as the United Nations, the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration have opened representative offices in Symferopol. Privately, many local organizers complain that they see little evidence of real material aid. "They have remodeled offices, a full complement of staff, and cruise around in Land Rovers," observed one activist, "but in reality their work seems to extend little beyond official contacts."

The usual conditions prevail in hospitals: unpaid salaries, primitive equipment and non-existent budgets. In an area that was once the playground of the Soviet elite, sanatoria are shutting down. As Dr. Mujaba Kasich, a resident at the oncological dispensary, pointed out, "this is especially perplexing when we see how ideal the conditions here are for children in remission. We have fresh air, the Black Sea, but hospitals are emptying for lack of funds."

The empty beds are mirrored by a critical shortage in clinical equipment. Children with treatable onco-hematological illnesses due for lack of crucial hematological equipment such as blood cell separators and simple equipment like automatic dosage regulators. Likewise, the cost of a single protocol of leukemia medicine is prohibitively expensive for almost all families. To date, said Mr. Memetov, "we rely on donations from countries which, not so long ago, were as poorly off as we are now."

A visit to the peninsula concludes with a visit to one of the national schools. Despite the difficult conditions, the Tatars are insistent that their children receive native-language instruction. "Many parents in Crimea are anxious that their children's culture would be cut off without Russian," said the school's director, "but we teach our children Ukrainian and English; we want them to have avenues of mobility in this society."

Nathan Hodge, based in Kyiv, is the in-country director of the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund.