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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

A PARADOX OF THE EPOCH: TATARS DEMAND THE COMMUNISTS BE CALLED TO ACCOUNT And the Communist Speaker makes his debut

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

On May 18 despite heavy rain over 10,000 people participated in the mourning meeting dedicated to the fifty-fourth anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Ten years ago, when the Tatars were just starting to return, one or two hundred people came to the central square and there was an “observer” for each. Today, Crimean Communist leader Leonid Hrach puts flowers to the memorial surrounded by Tatars holding signs reading, “We demand the opening of a criminal case against the Communist Party for the crime committed on May 18, 1944.” We live in an age of paradoxes.

The commissioner for national minorities of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Max van der Stoel, who visited the Crimea, was the first official to meet the new speaker. The commissioner was interested not only in Crimean Tatars problems, but also the Communist Speaker’s point of view. Hrach spoke of the two most painful questions, forming a new government and solving the problem of deported peoples. The same day he left for Kyiv for a scheduled meeting with President Kuchma.

Photo by Leonid Berestovsky, special for The Day

 

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