‘In short, the situation in Crimea is like this: there are proper people, and then there are the ‘blacks’ – that’s us – and they need to be weeded out,’ says Zair Smedlya, a leading figure in the Qurultai, the elected council and highest political authority of the Crimean Tatars. The Qurultai meets only once every two years, and meanwhile delegates its powers to an elected 33 member executive, the Mejlis. But Moscow, unlike Kyiv, doesn’t recognise this body.
Smedlya is currently involved in defending Tatars who have been charged with participating in mass rioting in 2014 during and after the occupation of the Crimean peninsula by the Russian military. The annexation of Crimea by Russia is widely seen as a huge step back for the Crimean Tatars, who won the right to return to their homeland only in 1989, long after Stalin ordered the NKVD to deport them to Central Asia en masse in 1944. Despite winning moderate self-autonomy and property rights after Ukraine became independent in 1991, the achievements of the past two decades are now precarious at best. Reports of kidnapping, intimidation, and criminal investigations continue to emerge from the recently-occupied peninsula.
Life in the balance
As Smedlya reports, the situation for the Crimean Tatars hangs in the balance.
