The Ukrainian World Congress released the following statement on May 18.
The Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) pays tribute to the innocent victims of the deportation of Crimean Tatar people in 1944 and supports the call of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people to the United Nations to recognize it as an act of genocide of totalitarian Soviet regime.
Seventy-six years ago, on May 18, the Soviet authorities began the planned deportation of over 200,000 ethnic Crimean Tatars from Crimea. The majority of these victims were women, children and elderly people. Almost half of them perished during the forced deportation because of starvation, illnesses, torture and slave labor in exile in deserted parts of Central Asia. The material and spiritual heritage of Crimean Tatars in Crimea had been destroyed. Libraries, schools and mosques had been closed, thousands of historic names were changed.
In 2019 the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people addressed world parliaments and governments calling on them to recognize the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people as genocide. The Ukrainian World Congress supports this call and welcomes the 2019 Statement of the Latvian Saiema on commemoration of the 1944 deportation victims, non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea and recognition of 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars as genocide.
“Today we unite in solemn commemoration of the Crimean Tatars who perished, forced to leave their native land by the Soviet regime. Today the Russian Federation continues the oppression and violence, having occupied Crimea and openly persecuting the Crimean Tatar people, blatantly violating human rights and freedoms,” stated Paul Grod, UWC president. “The UWC urges the global community to pay tribute to the victims of the atrocious crime of the totalitarian Communist regime and recognize the 1944 events as genocide of the Crimean Tatar people. At the same time, the world must not let the painful lessons of history be repeated. We call for increased pressure on the Russian Federation until it fully de-occupies Crimea and the Donbas, and releases political prisoners.”
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress issued the statement below on May 18.
This year marks the 76th anniversary of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar people. The Ukrainian Canadian community joins the Crimean Tatar people in mourning, grief and solemn remembrance.
The entire Crimean Tatar people, the indigenous people of Crimea, were exiled to the Soviet east by the totalitarian Soviet Communist regime in 1944. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were forcibly and violently deported – almost half lost their lives during the first year of exile – for no crime other than their language, culture and traditions. They were not allowed to return to Crimea for almost 50 years.
In November 2015, Ukraine’s Parliament recognized this crime as an act of Genocide against the Crimean Tatar people and established May 18 as the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People. Last year, the Parliament of Latvia also recognized this crime as an act of genocide. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress will continue to work to ensure that Canada’s Parliament recognizes the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people as an act of genocide.
Today, the ancestral home of the Crimean Tatar people, the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine, is illegally occupied by the Russian Federation. The Mejlis, the representative assembly of the Crimean Tatar people, has been banned by the Russian occupation authorities.
The Crimean Tatar people, bravely resisting this cruel occupation, are once again subject to brutal violence, repressions, arrests and attacks on their unalienable rights and freedoms by the Russian occupation authorities. We join all civilized nations in condemning the Russian Federation’s occupation of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine.
On May 17, the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba raised the flag of the Crimean Tatar People to honor the victims of the Genocide.
On Monday, May 18, the Crimean Tatar Resource Center will hold an online rally in memory of the victims of the genocide. The event will take place on Monday, May 18 at 9:00 EDT, streaming on the YouTube channel and Facebook page of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center.
May the Memory of the Victims Be Eternal. Vichnaya Pamiat.
The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America published the following statement on May 18.
This May 18, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the representative organization of over 1 million Americans of Ukrainian descent, joins with Ukrainian World Congress, the worldwide assembly of Ukrainian organizations representing over 20 million people, and the government of Ukraine, to pause in a moment of remembrance for the innocent victims of the Sürgün (or “violent expulsion”), the crime of genocide committed by Joseph Stalin’s soviet henchmen in 1944.
The Sürgün was an inhuman attempt to rid the Crimean peninsula of its population of approximately 238,000 indigenous people, the Qirim Tatar Millet. 70 years later, Vladimir Putin staged Russia’s military invasion and current illegal occupation of Crimea, and today seeks to erase any semblance of the indigenous Crimean Tatar identity from their homeland, including shutting down the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, replacing Crimean Tatar place names, and further removing opportunities for the Crimean Tatar language and culture to be taught and passed on.
Whatever attempts Russia makes to legitimize the occupation of the peninsula, the fact remains indisputable: Crimea is Ukraine.
On this 76th anniversary of the Deportation-Genocide of the Crimean Tatar people, the UCCA continues to voice our support for the Crimean Tatar people in their struggle for their rights, and again calls on the governments of the United States and European Union member states and the United Nations to recognize the Sürgün as an ethnic genocide of the Crimean Tatar people.