The Statement by the group of delegates of VI Kurultai and activists of the Crimean Tatar national movement
There are a lot of important socio-political documents, which reflect high humanistic ideals and spiritual values of human society. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted 71 years ago by the UN General assembly became the result of all of them. It showed the meaning of interpersonal, social relations and relations with the government based on genuine mutual human respect. We can see it in the preamble: “The recognition of the dignity of all members of the human family and of equal and inalienable human rights must be the bases of freedom, justice, and peace in the world”.
Among those who were preparing that document also were representatives of the Soviet Union – country thePresidium of which two weeks before the adoption of the declaration (on 26th of November 1948) issued an inquisition content decree “On criminal responsibility for escapes from places of forced and permanent settlement for people evicted to remote areas of USSR during the Civil War”.
The preamble of that document was like a warrant of the whole nations: “In order to strengthen the settlement regime for Chechens, Karachaevs, Ingushes, Balkarts, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Germans and others evicted by the Supreme Body of the USSR during the period of Civil War and because the deadline for their expulsion has not been determined, resettlement to remote areas of the Soviet Union of the above-mentioned persons was carried out forever, without the right to return to their former places of residence”.
In this way, the genocide carried out against these peoples was legally fixed. And the massacre of those who would dare to disobey was cruel: “For an unauthorized departure (escape) from the places of mandatory settlement of these evictions, the guilty are subject to criminal prosecution: “To determine the punishment for this crime as 20 years of hard labor. “
It was a totally hypocritical practice at the level of global public policy despite the adoption of the Declaration, it could not be eradicated from the practice of human life neither at the beginning of the 20th century nor later. The Declaration couldn’t protect the “equal and inalienable rights” of a number of peoples in today’s world. The Crimean Tatar people fully experienced the consequences of this policy, as a result sacrificing half of the popularity of its nation.
Thereafter people had been living under some preventive measures of USSR. Those years Crimean Tatar national movement was getting stronger and wider. Decades of such living under pressure made it a consistent and active guide to ideas and principles that were written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
That very situation took place in Crimea in February and March of 2014 was unfortunately almost familiar to Crimean Tatars. And if in previous years all the deeds of Crimean Tatars were constantly observed by the government, nowadays the Majlis is forbidden on the territory of Crimea by the Russian Federation. And if previously activists could be sentenced to one or three or seldom five years of imprisonment, nowadays we see that Crimean Tatars who were found to be political prisoners by ” Memorial” and other international organizations got their long prison terms starting from 8 and up to 19 years. And some were abducted and their fate is unknown. Earlier all the repressions were held under such special terms as “autonomists” and sometimes “extremists” today we can see that the Russian government uses much more tough formulation because peaceful and non-violent acts they call “terroristic”. Earlier individual and collective rights of Crimean Tatars, their desire to built a national autonomy could be simply met with silence or indifference. Today Crimean indigenous people are represented like some diaspore the only desirable thing of which is national-cultural autonomy.
In connection with the International Day of Human Rights, a group of VI Kurultai delegates and activists of Crimean Tatar national movement claims that: despite the obligation to respect and observe human rights that were mentioned by the countries members and the UN 71 years ago, and “that universal understanding of the nature of these rights and freedoms is of great importance for the full implementation of these obligations”, nowadays we can see an unacceptable suppression of fundamental rights and freedoms.
This situation has negative consequences for the development of the Crimean Tatar people, including matters of education cultural and historical memory.
