On May 18 the Crimea observed Deportation Memorial Day

May is still a mournful month in the Crimea. Too vivid is the memory of deportation in people’s minds, too little has been done to restore the rights of the victims. On May 16, flowers were laid and public cultural functions were held at all the former deportees’ marshaling points. The Presidium of the Crimean Supreme Council, the Council of Ministers, and the Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine addressed the Crimean population with the following words of sympathy, “Over 300,000 residents of the peninsula were forcibly deported from their homeland to Central Asia and Siberia. It is only after the formation of an independent Ukrainian state that the deportees really began to return en masse to their home places... We are convinced that, having lived through the tragedy of the past, all people now living on the Crimean Peninsula will join forces in their faith in a better future, in their aspiration to build a society free of interethnic disputes, enmity, and lawlessness.”

Meanwhile, a traditional national commemorative rally was held on Simferopol’s central square on May 17. The Coordination Council of Crimean Tatar Sociopolitical Forces proposed holding a Crimea-wide remembrance service and called on “compatriots and the faithful... to close ranks and press the Ukrainian government by all the means at their disposal to fulfill the legitimate demands for a full-scale rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar people.”

It will be recalled that the terrible lot of deportation befell on the Crimea-based Germans, Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Crimean Tatars. The Crimean Germans were the first to be banished on a mass scale: on August 15, 1941, 61,000 of them began to be deported, while 183,155 Crimean Tatars were exiled on May 18, 1944. A month later, the Crimean Tatars’ fate was shared by 11,000 Armenians, over 12,000 Bulgarians and 14,500 Greeks.

In the late 1950s, the places of exile saw the birth of a national movement for the restoration of rights of the Crimean Tatar people. The first Crimean Tatar families began to return to the Crimea in 1967 under an organized resettlement scheme. A total 577 Crimean Tatar families resettled in the Crimea from 1967 through 1977. The Tatar population of the Crimea rose by 33,000 to reach 38,400 between the censuses of 1979 and 1989. The bulk of this increment came in 1987-1988.

1989 was the year when deported people began to come back en masse. This was a process unprecedented in the world’s postwar history in terms of scale and intensity. An important role in the legitimization of this process was played by the Declaration of the USSR Supreme Soviet of November 14, 1989, On Recognizing as Unlawful and Criminal the Repressive Actions Against and Ensuring the Rights of the Peoples Subjected to Forced Deportation. On the basis of this document, the Councils of Ministers of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR and the Crimean Oblast Executive Committee made a series of decisions aimed to facilitate the resettlement of deportees. However, the collapse of the USSR, the economic crisis, rising prices, inflation, political instability, and other factors made it far more difficult to address the legislative, financial, and logistical problems of resettlement.

During the past few years, resettlement of the deported individuals coming back to the Crimea for permanent residence has remained one of this country’s most acute socio- economic and political problems. Ukraine is in fact the only state, which has assumed responsibility for the destiny of hundreds of thousands of people and has funded for the past decade a series of measures aimed at their socioeconomic and ethno- cultural development. The 2001 census revealed that 243,430 Tatars resided in the Crimea.

“By establishing the Council of Representatives of the Crimean Tatar People under the president of Ukraine, we have managed to break the impasse in the relations between the authorities and the national movement leaders and launch a dialog with the President. This was not in the least conducive to the stabilization of the ethnopolitical situation in the Crimea,” says Crimean government head Serhiy Kunitsyn. “A consistent course toward integrating the deportees into Ukrainian society allowed us to allocate far greater funds for the resettlement — from UAH 8.98 million in 1998 to 55.1 million in 2002, with UAH 15.3 million coming from the Crimean budget. As a result of more funds, we were able to commission 59,922 square meters of housing, 223.8 kilometers of water lines, 209.1 kilometers of power lines, 10.1 km of roads, and 35.25 km of gas lines. This allowed us to provide housing to more than 1200 families, supplying electricity and water to 90% and 60% of the villages where the repatriates live, respectively. In May 2002 the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a deportee resettlement scheme valid until 2005. As of May 14, 2002, UAH 15.2 million was allotted for its implementation, including 12.6 million from the national budget and 2.5 million from that of the Crimea...”

Yet, the picture of the repatriates’ life is not as rosy as we would like it to be. Their villages are only 8% furnished with gas lines and paved roads, while they almost completely lack sewer facilities. Still very sore remain the problems of transportation, telephone communication, and radio installation. But the most acute problem for the repatriates is employment. Less than half the 136,000 able-bodied Crimean Tatars have a full-time job. What further aggravates the problem is that two-thirds of the deportees lived in urban areas in exile, while after coming back to the Crimea more than 70% of the repatriates have to resettle in rural areas.

The Crimean Tatars also seem underrepresented in public administration bodies. In March 2002, 933 Crimean Tatars were elected to legislatures of different levels, a mere 14% of the total number of deputies. Eight Crimean Tatars were elected to the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The Tatars are represented in Crimean executive bodies by 252 (5.8%) out of 4312 officials, including six in the Council of Ministers, 28 in the ministries, 27 in the republican committees, 101 in district administrations, and 84 in local government bodies.

“We do appreciate Ukraine’s role in repatriating the deportees,” Deputy Chairman of the Crimea Supreme Council Ilmi Umerov told The Day, “but this process is not confined to resettlement and housing problems alone. We would like to see more attention paid to restoration of our people’s rights. This should be borne in mind always, not just once a year in May. The only thing that can really restore our people’s rights is reinstitution of a precisely Crimean Tatar national and territorial autonomy and adoption of Ukrainian laws on the rights of repatriates. I think a provision on the status of the Crimean Tatar people should be an integral part of the Ukrainian Constitution. Some clauses of the Crimean Constitution also need to be altered.”