NEWS ANALYSIS

Crimean Tatars end protests after demands are met

by Lily Hyde
RFE/RL Newsline

A group of Crimean Tatars ended protests in the regional capital, Symferopol, last week, taking down tents that had ringed government buildings. That move came after Mustafa Jemilev, leader of the Mejlis (the Crimean Tatar political council), announced key demands had been met by Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Kunitsin. Mr. Jemilev said the agreement will allow Crimean Tatars to own land and open their own schools. They were also allowed to set up a council representing their interests.

The concessions follow a similar agreement reached by Mr. Jemilev in talks with President Leonid Kuchma in Kyiv in mid-May. After those talks, Mr. Kuchma issued a presidential decree setting up an official Council of Representatives of the Crimean Tatar people, with Mr. Jemilev as chairman. Part of the committee's mandate is to resolve the question of the status of the Mejlis and the Kurultai, the Tatar congress.

The agreement with President Kuchma followed massive demonstrations, organized by the Mejlis, in which an estimated 18,000 Crimean Tatars converged on Symferopol to protest discrimination.

The Tatars constitute just 12 percent of the Crimean population, but their cause carries great weight in view of the history of the peninsula. The Tatars were deported en masse from their Crimean homeland during World War II on the orders of Joseph Stalin, who accused them of collaborating with the Nazis. Between one third and one half of them died on the way to exile in Central Asia. Many Tatars have returned to Crimea since the 1980s, but they continue to suffer from political and economic discrimination.

Only half of the returned Tatar population has gained Ukrainian citizenship and, therefore, the right to vote. This means that Tatars are underrepresented in both Ukrainian and Crimean political institutions. Tatars argue that a number of seats should be set aside for them in the autonomous republic's Parliament. They also demand that their language be granted the status of a state language and that more Tatar schools be established. At the moment, according to Tatar organizations, there are only six schools for 39,000 Tatar children. The Ukrainian Constitution guarantees all national minorities the right to use and to study in their own language.

The Mejlis, which has no official standing, is demanding that it be recognized as the council of the Tatar people. Mejlis member Kurtveli Khiyasidonov says that would be a step toward restoring the situation before World War II, when Tatars enjoyed a special status. "Let us be a minority," he says, "but there should be national autonomy because up to the war there was such autonomy and now [the authorities] won't grant it. Other nationalities [represented on the peninsula] - Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians and so forth - have their own state, where their language develops, their culture can develop. We don't have that except for Crimea. And we can develop only in Crimea."

Last month's protest march not only highlighted current grievances but also commemorated the forced deportations the Crimean Tatars endured 55 years ago.

Highlighting the rights of the Tatars, however, is seen by many, especially Russians and Ukrainians, as stirring up ethnic tension. Events in Kosovo were not far from the minds of many who took part in the rally and those who observed it. One Tatar banner called Crimean Parliament Chairman Leonid Hrach a "mini-Milosevic," and speakers drew parallels between recent actions against the Kosovars and the deportation of the Tatars in 1944.

Ukrainians and Russians on the streets said they were afraid and angry at what they called "agitation." Many resent the Tatar towns that have sprung up throughout the peninsula, putting a strain on Crimea's already weak infrastructure. And, although a representative from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate spoke out for peace and understanding at the rally, some inhabitants of Symferopol, with the Serbian and Bosnian conflict in mind, said it is impossible for Christians and Muslims to live together peacefully.

In Kyiv, Georgii Popov, head of the Verkhovna Rada's Committee for Human Rights, Minorities and Ethnic Issues, said the problems of the Tatars should not be given special priority; rather they should be solved along with the overall economic problems of the country. Mr. Popov said, "these problems are felt especially painfully by those repatriated to Crimea, to the place where their ancestors lived." But, he added, "this same difficulty is the general situation in Ukraine."

Lily Hyde is a Kyiv-based correspondent for RFE/RL.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 6, 1999, No. 23, Vol. LXVII

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