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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Due to hard living conditions, morbidity among repatriates has increased in all categories

7 September, 1999 - 00:00

In recent months, the number of the Crimean Tatars wishing to return to their ancestral motherland has sharply declined. Sometimes Tatar families that already moved to the Crimea but never received Ukrainian citizenship leave on the return trip to Uzbekistan. Last fall and winter, over forty persons a day turned on citizenship related issues to the Spryiannia (Assistance) Naturalization and Human Rights Fund, while in the three summer months only a total of 20 showed up, Spryiannia director Kostiantyn Rustemov told a Yalta seminar on the Problems of Citizenship for Previously Deported Peoples held under the aegis of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Refat Chubarov, Deputy Chairman of the Crimean Tatar Majlis thinks that «such behavior by people is caused by social disorderliness, unemployment, and poverty. Over 50% of the Crimean Tatars who returned to the peninsula cannot find jobs and have no permanent housing.»

The situation that came to exist in a Crimean settlement of Vilne is typical for the repatriated families: 118 deportees living there are either stateless persons or Uzbek citizens. Most decided to settle there because of inexpensive housing, which people from a previously disbanded military garrison offered for sale. The houses, bought for a song, had leaky roofs, broken windows and doors, no electricity or heating, but the returnees decided that after earning some money they could handle the repairs. Unfortunately, for the more than five years they have lived in Ukraine, they have never been able to get jobs, and, consequently, collect the needed funds. Moreover, many of them cannot pay even for food. Dzhelial Baziyev says, «Life in the Crimea turned out much harder than we could have imagined. We could afford only an uncompleted house with a dirt floor, without even water supply, and it is impossible to breed livestock or grow anything in the garden if you don't have water. I and my sons could never find full-time jobs, and my wife gets her pension of 37 hryvnias far from regularly. Last summer my sons worked on a collective farm though, earning 2.5 hryvnias a day, and we had it a little bit easier, but what we are going to eat tomorrow, I just don't know. If we could have foreseen what awaited us here, we would have hesitated before moving.»

According to the sociological poll held last April with the assistance of the Office of UN High Commissioner for Refugees and under the direction of Iryna Prybytkova, Ph.D. in economics, which involved over 800 respondents, three out of ten surveyed Crimean Tatars regret their return to the Crimea. Difficult material conditions and the impossibility of joining family remaining in the country of previous residence were cited as the main reasons. Incidentally, compared to 1997, the sickness rate among the Crimean Tatars has increased in all categories. Now there are invalids or seriously ill people in every fourth family.

December 31, 1999 is the final date of expiration for the Ukrainian-Uzbek agreement, according to which all representatives of the Crimean Tatar people expatriated from the Crimea in 1944 and currently Uzbek citizens can revoke their Uzbek citizenship and receive Ukrainian citizenship according to a simplified procedure and without paying a consular fee of $100. As of today, 192,700 out of 250,000 repatriates living in the Crimea have taken advantage of the opportunity and received Ukrainian citizenship. Out of 64,000 Crimean Tatars having Uzbek citizenship 27,000 decided to follow this procedure. Director of the Passport, Registration, and Migration Department under the Ministry of Internal Affairs Nadiya Poyarkova expressed the hope that «all those wishing to receive Ukrainian citizenship will have enough time to do so before the agreement expires. In fact, over 11,000 statements were delivered to the Crimea from the Uzbek Embassy in Ukraine confirming the revocation of Uzbek citizenship the deportees».

According to Mykola Rudko, Chairman of the State Committee on National Minority Affairs and Migration, «waging the campaign for granting Ukrainian citizenship to the repatriates would have been impossible without the participation of the Ukrainian Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Every year, $2 million are allocated to the UNHCR for the implementation of the program as well as rehabilitation of dwellings for Crimean Tatars and satisfaction of their social needs, primarily for medical services.» As for the integration and development program for the formerly deported people in the peninsula, Mustafa Dzhemiliev said that «as of today, only 8 million hryvnias have been allocated out of the 20 million which the state budget provided for integrating and developing returnees from deportation, and it is not clear when the rest amount will be received». Thus, if in the immediate future the situation does not improve, it is quite possible that Crimean Tatars, who returned home after deportation, will be expatriated anew, this time not by the government, but by poverty.

INCIDENTALLY

President Leonid Kuchma told a press conference in Simferopol, «Despite the fact that only the Ukrainian government is concerned with the return of the Crimean Tatars, while the other deported are assisted by other countries, this does not mean that there will be any differences in our approaches to solving the problems of the deported peoples.» Also, the President objected the creation of Crimean Tatar national autonomy in the Crimea, because «there is an adequate legal framework established in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and any other actions will cause imbalance and have negative consequences.»

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