The statement below was released on May 17.
May 18 is the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People. The Ukrainian Canadian community joins the Crimean Tatar people in mourning, grief and solemn remembrance. May the Memory of the Victims Be Eternal. Вічная Пам’ять.
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.
The ancestral home of the Crimean Tatar people, the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine, is today 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.