Crimean Tatar Deportation Victims Commemorated on Maidan

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Crimean Tatars gathered in Independence Square in Kyiv to commemorate the victims of the 1944 deportation. In Simferopol, participants of an auto rally in commemoration of the tragedy were detained.

As reported by Ukrayinska Pravda, leaders of the Crimean Tatar people and their national organizations, people’s deputies, and civil society activists spoke from an improvised stage on Independence Square. About 1500 people came to honor the memory of the victims of the deportations.

At the beginning of the event, participants, among whom were representatives of the Crimean Tatar people, Kyiv residents, and visitors, sang Ukrainian and the Crimean Tatar anthems, then the imam read a prayer.

Many of the speeches urged listeners to not forget the need to return Crimea to Ukraine. Participants were holding flags of Ukraine, the Crimean Tatar people, as well as banners reading “Russian occupiers leave Crimea,” “Eternal memory to the victims of the genocide of the Crimean people,” “1944 – 2014 deportation again,” “On May 18 we all are Crimean Tatars.”

According to Krym.Realii[Radio Liberty’s Crimean service], a prayer service was held in the mosques of Crimea on the occasion of the tragic date. In Simferopol, members of Russian special forces first blocked the Western bus station with police carriers and then detained participants of an auto rally dedicated to the memory of the Crimean Tatar deportation victims. About sixty people were taken to the police station on Pavlenko Street. Later, relatives of detainees and eyewitnesses said that the detainees began to get fingerprinted after a two-hour interrogation.

According to some estimates, over 183 thousand Crimean Tatars from Crimea were transported to Central Asia, Siberia, and the Urals. The official reason was because of the cooperation between some of the Crimean Tatars with Nazi Germany. The deportation began on the morning of May 18, 1944, and ended at 4 p.m. on May 20. Deportees were forbidden to return to their homeland until 1989. Every year, mass events have been held in Crimea on the anniversary of the deportation, such as a memorial service in the center of Simferopol. After the annexation of Crimea, local authorities banned such events and said they will hold them in a “new format.”