Putin is a Modern-day Hitler

The Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Refat Chubarov is convinced that the current situation with the Crimean Tatars is a modern-day deportation. We are publishing his speech at the press conference on the arrest of Ahtem Chiygoz, one of the leaders of the Crimean Tatar people.

When I was a kid and my mother told me about the horrors of deportation, I often had the desire to be by this little girl, my future mother, and protect her. Once I told her about it. Mom hugged me tightly and said: “God willing, my son, that you never see these days.”

Now I catch myself thinking that I could not protect her. I could not be with my future mother in 1944 and cannot defend her now when I am 57 years old. She remained in Crimea with my family: brothers and nephews.

70 years later, the devil’s wheel of Moscow terror has once again begun spinning on Crimean land. The wheel that pulled out the Tatars in 1944, as they thought, by the roots.

We came back half a century later, having lost half of our population. For 23 years we have tried to settle in Ukraine and we managed to do it to the extent that we were able to.

What We Will Open the Doors into

All that is happening now with people whose rights have already been violated – Mustafa Dzhemilev, Ismet Yuksel, Sinaver Kadyrov, I and hundreds of others being repressed by judges – demonstrates one thing: we cannot talk about the Russian Federation respecting human rights. We should talk about how to stop Russia. Not only do Crimean Tatars or Ukrainians need to speak. The world must say it.

A few days ago the world memorialized the anniversary of the Holocaust. The Holocaust, the Holodomor and the deportation of peoples – such universal scale disasters of the twentieth century began with the first offenses. And the world did not react to it. People, leaders, and states did not react. First there were pogroms, the Night of Broken Glass, then the furnaces and other crimes. Millions, millions and millions of victims! The world is falling to this now.

We are at the moment when we have open doors. We are standing in front of the door – and there is either a repeat of 1939 with all the consequences of Hitler’s policies for the world, or the Hague Tribunal. What we see when the door will open depends on all of us: on both Ukraine and the world. And then we can talk about how to restore the rights of the Crimeans. Hoping that the occupation authorities will listen to us is useless. In order to protect Crimeans, we need to talk about how to stop the aggressor.

New Deportation

At the end of 2013 there were 285,000 Crimean Tatars in Crimea, but the Ukrainian authorities reported that there were 300,000.

Today there are much fewer. The occupation authorities have more than enough ways to make people leave the peninsula. First of all, there are the threatening calls that people perceive as personal danger. The occupying power does it first and foremost against the Crimean Tatars.

As of today, about 150 Crimean Tatars are being punished by the courts. 120 of them are people who welcomed Mr. Mustafa (the leader of the Crimean Tatar people Mustafa Dzhemilev – Ed.) on the administrative border between the mainland of Ukraine and Crimea. Remember the violent abduction of young Crimean Tatars. Every father thinks about what could happen to his son. So far we do not know about the fate of most of them.

Look at this unconcealed, impudent, demonstrative non-investigation of the death of Reshat Ametov. This was the first Crimean Tatar murdered, who disappeared in early March 2014, and on March 15th, he was found tortured and killed.

I will tell you who killed him. Sheremet (Mikhail Sheremet – Deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Republic of Crimea, in charge of the security forces, the commander of the so-called “Crimean self-defense” – Ed.), Aksenov (Sergey Aksenov – Prime Minister of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea – Ed.), whose “self-defense” forces report directly to. I do not want to say that they killed with their own hands. But they know people who appear in the video provided by journalists.

At the same time a person who illegally appointed themselves a prosecutor, boasts in a grandiose manner on television that they have opened a case against Ahtem Chiygoz for the peaceful protests on February 16th, 2014. The arrest of Ahtem Chiygoz and the accusations against him have a purely political motive.

Let me remind you that, on February 25th, 2014, we learned that there was going to be a special session of Rada on February 26th, and that it was expected to adopt appeals to Putin on the entering of Russian troops and other decisions that could lead to the severance of Crimea from Ukraine. I personally signed on behalf of the Mejlis application to hold a demonstration on February 26th. On February 25th, we registered it at the Simferopol City Council, in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine. We declared three thousand participants. On the same day, Sergey Aksenov on behalf of “Russian unity” also applied, and they declared the same number of people.

On February 26th at around 11 a.m. lots of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians gathered with national flags. At around noon the ratio of participants was as follows: about 15,000 Crimean Tatars and supporters of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and about 3,000 supporters of “Russian unity.” But after lunch I received a message (here an additional investigation may be required) from the head of the Crimean Main SBU Office that people with Kalashnikovs arrived in Sevastopol and there may be catastrophic scenario.

Thank God it did not happen. The area in front of Verkhovna Rada of Crimea is very small. And at about 3 p.m. there were a lot of people on both sides.

Already on the second day, in the morning, people in masks and armed people entered the building of the Verkhovna Rada and the Council of Ministers.

Why do hundreds of activists of the Crimean Tatar people have to think about how tomorrow there can be criminal cases opened on their previous activities? We have thousands of people who protested in 1987 at Red Square in Moscow. If you can openly threaten Ahtem Chiygoz with ten years in prison for the events of February 26th, 2014, why not do the same for the events of June 1987? Why not go back to the 50s?

The Land Question

The Russian Federation is not planning to create living conditions for 2.3 million people in Crimea. Crimea is planned to be turned into a Russian military outpost in the south. 11 airfields that were active in the Soviet time are already being restored. Therefore, people will be forced out of there.

Some of those who welcomed the arrival of Russian troops are now faced with repressions. They were hoping to solve their issues, including in regards to land, with the arrival of the Russian authorities, but were trapped.

The land question has been one of the most complicated and unresolved since the time of the Ukrainian authorities. Russian authorities have promised to solve it, and are doing so very dramatically. They are saying “From now on we will live by our rules. We don’t care what was before. Clear out this land!”

Ukrainian authorities tried to gradually resolve this issue, however complex it may have been. About 8,000 people, who have been waiting for years to obtain land, are now back to step one.

“And I Am Not Dramatizing”

The Mejlis’s position is this: we tell people that every Crimean Tatar should make every effort to stay on their land. We didn’t take all this time to come back, only to leave this land because of Russia’s politics. But we cannot demand that from every person, especially if they or their family feel threatened. People should have a choice.

Among some of the Crimean Tatars the debate on how low to bow their head continues. For example, how the more loyalty you demonstrate, the less you might experience repressions. But the vast majority understands, no matter how you behave in this situation in Crimea, a pre-planned goal will be implemented.

We see that repressions declined when we were creating international headlines and when the leaders of other countries were involved. For example, after a meeting between the two presidents Erdogan and Putin on December 1st, such crude repressions stopped for about a month. The Turkish Foreign Minister said in an interview about two weeks ago that Russians did not keep any of their promises that were given during Putin’s visit. Then the repressions restarted.

A long time ago we witnessed how the soldiers drove out thousands of Tatars. We do not want you to become witnesses of a new deportation. And it will not stop at the Crimean Tatars.

You want to say that I am dramatizing? No! Russia’s politics towards Crimea doesn’t have common sense.

If your mother is 81 years old and you cannot see her for 11 months – what can I say? Putin is a modern-day Hitler. How can I describe such a person? Today Mustafa Dzhemilev, who devoted his life to the return of the Crimean Tatars, cannot enter Crimea, and neither can Ismet Yuksel, myself, or Sinaver Kadyrov, who sat in Soviet camps.

If Putin is not stopped by society, the next step for the Crimean Tatars will be the restoration of the camps in the vast expanses of the Urals, and those who happen to be on the territories under his control will go there in train cars.