“Lead it, don’t oust it”

According to Ilmi Umerov, Mejlis member, former chief of the district administration in Bakhchysarai, Crimea, last week there was a meeting between Russia’s Authorized Representative Oleg Belaventsev, the “Crimean boss” Sergei Aksionov, and Mejlis members at the Russian president’s representation. At this meeting, representatives of the occupational authorities demanded that the Mejlis solve two problems: firstly, it should urgently, within two days, convene a session and reinstate the earlier expelled Crimean officials: Vice Speaker of Crimea’s “State Council” Remzi Ilyasov, Simferopol Vice Mayor Teifuk Gafarov, and Zaur Smirnov, head of the State Committee for International Relations and Deported Citizens. Secondly, Remzi Ilyasov should be appointed acting chairman of the Mejlis.

On their part, hoping for an easy “election,” Ilyasov and Ruslan Balbek have met Crimea’s Chief Mufti Emirali Ablayev, the religious leader of Crimean Tatars, and members of the Mejlis’s presidium. “I suggest we forget all the personal grudges and begin to work fruitfully for the benefit of our people,” Ilyasov said at this meeting. He maintained that “the Mejlis was and still is a representative body of the people, and its resolutions have an impact on Crimean Tatars’ world outlook.” Ablayev also called on the participants to be united. “The word of the mufti should be weightier than that of anybody else,” Balbek said, adding that the Muslim Religious Directorate of Crimea is playing the leading role in the life of Crimean Tatars.

Ali Khamzin, a Mejlis member and a participant in the meeting, said that one must be guided, first of all, by the Mejlis’s policy documents. He recalled that the Mejlis had been prepared in February-March 2014 to openly cooperate with the authorities in granting Crimean Tatars “the powers they have never had before,” but now it is far more difficult, and that “the Russian government can resume this interrupted process on the basis of its own document, i.e. the Crimean Supreme Council’s resolution of March 11, 2014, “On a Guaranteed Resumption of the Crimean Tatar People’s Rights and their Integration into the Crimean Community.”

However, after even such a confidential meeting, Ilyasov announced that it had been decided that the next Mejlis session would fix a date for a new Kurultai – he has thus disclosed the secret plans of a complete overhaul of the Crimean Tatar people’s self-government bodies. In response to this information, Khamzin said that “this meeting did not discuss at all any dates for the Crimean Tatar people’s Kurultai.”

A well-known Russian analyst, Yana Amelina, who cooperates with secret services’ analytical centers, visited Crimea a month ago and said in a press interview that it was a wrong policy to oust the Mejlis from Crimea. She noted that banking on marginal Crimean Tatar organizations would never justify itself, for they are not popular or influential among the grassroots and, for this reason, “you should lead, not oust, the Mejlis.” She popularly explained how to do this in her backstage meetings with Aksionov and Konstantinov. And they have begun to “lead.” But things went awry in the beginning, although Ilyasov, Balbek, and Smirnov brainwashed each of the Mejlis members who have remained behind in Crimea.

In a commentary to Kryminform, Balbek points out that this meeting gathered “the sound-minded forces of this executive body of Crimean Tatars. It was their own decision to assemble because they know that the prosperity of the people they represent and whose interests they are supposed to defend is impossible without interaction with Crimea’s authorities, without a rapid adaptation to Russian society.” In his turn, Umerov said he considers these proposals “cynicism pure and simple on the part of Crimea’s current topmost officials and their henchmen among the Crimean Tatars. Leaders are denied entry to Crimea, people are being terrorized with arrests and searches, events that are customary and important for us are being banned, and now they’ve decided to lead the Mejlis!” He urged Mejlis members not to give in to provocations.

In the opinion of Refat Chubarov, the occupational authorities have begun to destroy the Mejlis by way of punitive measures coupled with “velvet-glove” methods. “Te events that occurred in Crimea after the arrest of Akhtem Chiygoz, a person devoted to his people and principles of the Crimean Tatar People’s Kurultai, show that the occupational authorities have begun direct actions aimed at destroying the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People which continues to protect the Crimean Tatar people’s rights and interests even in the conditions of all-pervading lawlessness and arbitrary rule,” Chubarov says in his blog.

According to Chubarov, to carry out the planned provocation about reformatting the Mejlis, the government has mobilized all the Crimean Tatar activists who agree to serve the occupiers. He says that, “being aware of a special role and high prestige of the Kurultai and the Mejlis both in Ukraine’s Crimean Tatar community and on the international arena,” the Crimean government “is setting itself a goal to change the very essence of these bodies and use them in its own interests.” Chubarov recalls that membership of Ilyasov, Smirnov, and Gafarov in the Mejlis was suspended because they breached the Kurultai’s regulations and the Mejlis clause. For this reason, Kurultai delegates and Mejlis members, as well as national movement activists, will not allow provocateurs to trample upon the principles and values of the Crimean Tatar national movement.

“The occupational authorities in Crimea are failing dismally in their attempts to replace Refat Chubarov, the legitimately elected head of the Mejlis, by the obedient Remzi Ilyasov, while Kyiv is tired of waiting for Crimea’s ‘chief’ Sergei Aksionov,” Mustafa Dzhemilev, member of the Ukrainian Parliament and Authorized Representative of the President of Ukraine for Crimean Tatar People Issues, told depo.ua. “The occupational authorities are now pressuring Kurultai delegates to convene and elect a puppet,” he says. “Remzi Ilyasov is now playing the role of a puppet. But it’s a flop – thy will never find enough people to come to the Kurultai, and, in general, Kurultai delegates believe that it must not be held on an occupied territory.” His information is that they managed to win over only three persons, including Ilyasov, out of 33. “There are also three or four who are still hesitating,” Dzhemilev says. “They say one should cooperate with the government and address problems, but the real issue here is fear, not the wish to solve problems, because no problems can be solved under an occupational regime. But even if they gather a quorum, the Mejlis is not authorized to elect its head, for this is a prerogative of the Kurultai. “Chubarov is a living chairman of the Mejlis. Based in Kyiv, he quite effectively conducts sessions by means of Skype. It is not the Soviet era now, and they cannot impose complete isolation because there are such things as Skype and telephone. Naturally, our people try not to speak too much because phones are tapped. Akhtem Chiygoz, who represented Chubarov in Crimea, was arrested, and Nariman Dzhelialov is standing in for him, but he is also awaiting arrest and says it is necessary to elect one more deputy as soon as possible. In general, all the Mejlis members are silently waiting to be arrested. Crimean Tatars are clever now – they are watching oil and gas prices and waiting for Russia to collapse,” Mustafa Dzhemilev says.