On May 18, official reports from the Crimean authorities marked the anniversary of the deportation of various ethnic groups from Crimea in 1944, notably excluding any mention of the Crimean Tatar people. This observation was made by the project Crimean Realities, affiliated with Radio Free Europe.
According to journalists, the official events held on this date were referred to as the “Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Deportation of the Peoples of Crimea,” without specifying which groups were being commemorated.
Sergei Aksyonov, the head of Crimea, laid flowers at the memorial complex “The Path of Revival of the Peoples of Crimea” in the village of Syren, located in the Bakhchisarai district. This memorial was constructed under the auspices of the Russian authorities.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Konstantinov, the speaker of the Crimean parliament, paid tribute at the “Revival” memorial situated within the territory of the Fevzi Yakubov Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University. Official reports from these ceremonies did not mention the deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
Aksyonov’s social media posts referenced “solidarity and support” for unnamed peoples who were “deprived of their homeland, homes, property, and basic rights.” In contrast, Konstantinov’s official statements referred to the deportation of “hundreds of thousands of people from 1941 to 1944,” again without specifying the affected groups.
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars began at 3 a.m. on May 18, 1944, and concluded on May 20. In less than two days, the Soviet authorities expelled the entire indigenous population of Crimea from the peninsula. On November 12, 2015, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a law recognizing the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatar people as genocide and designated May 18 as a day of remembrance for the victims of this crime.
Official commemorations in Crimea on the anniversary of the 1944 deportation of various ethnic groups notably excluded references to the Crimean Tatars. This omission has drawn attention to the lack of acknowledgment of the historical injustices faced by this community.
Source: Radio Free Europe