The General Prosecutor’s Office has the distribution and privatization of plots on the south Crimean coast under control

PICKETERS’ DWELLINGS IN SIMEYIZ

The article “The Battle of Simeyiz” (The Day, No. 25, September 9) was about the land situation in Yalta and resumed squatting practices on the southern Crimean coast. The following weekend the situation in Greater Yalta continued to aggravate. Despite their earlier promises to deliberate and solve the issue, the deputies of the Ai-Vasyl Village Council did not even bother to place it on the agenda. In response, the Crimean Tatars renewed their picketing and 17 persons went on a hunger strike. They sent telegrams to the central Ukrainian leadership and power structures, announcing the hunger strike, which they were determined to continue until their demands were met.

President Leonid Kuchma instructed the General Prosecutor to deal with the situation on the spot. The Yalta City Council again held an extended meeting involving people’s deputies, the President’s Council of Crimean Tatar Representatives, Crimean and Yalta prosecutors, Prosecutor General Sviatoslav Piskun, Crimean Speaker Boris Deich, Premier Serhiy Kunitsyn, Crimean Prosecutor Oleksandr Dobrorez. The situation was reported by Ukrainian People’s Deputy Mustafa Dzhemiliov (the unofficial and undisputed leader of his people since the dissident era — Ed.). A joint resolution was passed to the effect that the General Prosecutor’s Office would dispatch a task force to the Crimea to check the legality of land allocations carried out on the peninsula over a long period. A number of other measures were taken, including the setting up of a special commission to verify plot allocation requests. Crimean Prosecutor Oleksandr Dobrorez announced that the autonomous republic’s prosecutor’s office, jointly with experts from the Republic Land Committee and local authorities, would take stock of the land resources not only in Greater Yalta, but also throughout the Crimea. Inspections would be held at the Executive Committee of Yalta, checking the land distribution records. The prosecutor’s inspectors would pay special attention to the natural reserves. Oleksandr Dobrorez said that his office would deal with all those profiteering in Crimean plots and practicing other illicit land transactions to win political gains. Sviatoslav Piskun declared that, beginning on this day, the land allocation waiting lists will be drawn up in Greater Yalta in accordance with the law... The General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine has thus become a major land surveyor in the Crimea, so as to restore law and order in there.

Sviatoslav Piskun told journalists after the meeting that his office asked Crimean Tatar residents to respond to the local administrative and law enforcement authorities’ requests and dismantle their makeshift dwellings where they had appropriated plots. “No one is going to use threats or force, but everybody must respect the law,” he stressed. The Prosecutor General emphasized that the Ukrainian state wanted the settlement of Crimean Tatars in their native land to be a planned and lawful process. He announced that his office would play an increasingly important role in working out interethnic agreement, and a deputy prosecutor in charge of interethnic affairs was added to the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office’s table of organization. Currently the post is occupied by Reshat Abdiyev. Mr. Piskun also introduced the newly appointed deputy prosecutor to those present at the meeting, noting that he was a Crimean Tatar and would hopefully find solving the problems easier. Majlis Vice Speaker Remzi Ilyasov also stated that the situation had aggravated mainly under the previous parliament and the current Crimean administration; in 1995-2002, the Crimean Tatars in Greater Yalta had not received a single plot, despite the waiting lists of over 3,000 names. In his words, plots in the Crimea had started being used in various transactions by Kyiv and even Moscow commercial structures, so that persons other than Ukrainian nationals were taking possession on a mounting scale, while Crimean Tatars, the historical masters of this land, remained landless. A number of plots allocated several years ago had only caused their tenants to go bankrupt. Thus, plots allotted repatriates in Kikeneyiz were in landslide areas, so the new structures began to run cracks and foundations break, turning the structures into potential and actual ruin impossible to live in. The Majlis Vice Speaker stressed that the people no longer believed the problem could be solved in a legal manner and for this reason began protest actions.

What is the status now? On September 15 Ukrainian People’s Deputy Mustafa Dzhemiliov and Crimean Vice Speaker Ilmi Umerov visited the plots and spoke with protesters. Many of the latter refused to abandon their appropriated property, saying they did not trust the current authorities to carry out their decisions — meaning not the prosecutor nor the central Crimean government, but local authorities, township and village councils. The latter were in possession of the land under the law, but did everything the way they pleased. For example, the last in Gurzuf, when a group of picketers vacated a plot on the seacoast, it was immediately occupied by someone from outside the Crimea who proceeded to dig a foundation pit for a construction project. Ilmi Umerov told The Day:

“It has been decided to stop actions of protest and picketing. We have done our part. Now all the plots are vacated, people are dismantling their temporary dwellings and taking away the construction materials. There are only pickets left, one by the water in Simeyiz and in the township, near the Kseniya Villa. It’s because People’s Deputy Mustafa Dzhemiliov sent an official inquiry to the General Prosecutor of Ukraine, requesting verification of the legality of the plot allocated for the water park, for the area was actually meant for a Crimean Tatar to carry out his construction project. However, the former Crimean Speaker forced the local authorities to give the plot to a different person. Here the pickets will remain until the prosecutor’s office makes its ruling.

“The Crimean Tatars have never regarded the peninsula as a resort area, a place where tourists and vacationers can relax and amuse themselves, and then leave. We see it as our homeland, so we more than anyone else are interested in having law and order restored here...”