While working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as
a senior policy adviser I was involved in the 1990s in the
multilateral efforts to bring the Crimean Tatars back to Crimea from
former Central Asia to which they had been deported en masse by Stalin
in May 1944. At that time, together with the CSCE High Commissioner
for National Minorities and the Council of Europe we had to persuade
the authorities of the newly independent Ukrainian state that the
Crimean Tatars would not be a potential source of Islamist extremism
and separatism, as the Russian media often claimed, that their
acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship should be expedited, and that
they be helped to integrate.
Fortunately, these efforts were successful for official Kyiv
ultimately proved receptive. Some 250,000 Crimean Tatars returned in
the mid-1990s, mainly from Uzbekistan. Many of them if not most of
them had been born in exile. Despite the hostility of the
pro-Russian authorities in Crimea and efforts to keep them politically
and economically disenfranchised, the Crimean Tatars persevered and
quickly re-established themselves socially and as a political factor
on the peninsula. Despite severe provocations, they did this
peacefully. In 1998, in recognition of this their leader Mustafa
Dzhemilev, who had been imprisoned several times by the Soviet
authorities for campaigning for the right of his people to return to
Crimea, was awarded the prestigious annual Nansen prize by UNHCR.
Since their return to Crimea, while seeking to renew their cultural
life and preserve their identity, the Crimean Tatars have been
exemplary citizens of Ukraine. They have demonstrated their loyalty
to Ukraine and democratic values, most recently by their support for
the Maidan and for Crimea remaining part of Ukraine. The latest
videos and photographs from Crimea show Crimean Tatar men bringing
food to beleaguered Ukrainian soldiers, and their women protesting
against the Russian military occupation. Thus, the very presence of
the Crimean Tatars in Crimea rankles with Moscow and the pro-Russia
elements it has mobilized locally to justify its aggression on the
ground of the need to protect Crimea’s inhabitants from Ukrainian
extremists.
But how is Moscow to deal with these determined Crimean Tatar
Ukrainians? So far, like the Ukrainian soldiers, they have shown
remarkable restraint and discipline in very difficult conditions and
their spirit will clearly not be broken. Intimidation and the prospect
of terror are already being conjured up from the Russian side —
Chechnya’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has twice now offered to come with
his thugs to Crimea to help “re-establish order”. Hardly
surprisingly, Crimean Tatar leaders are now expressing grave anxiety
over the predicament of their people and their diaspora in Turkey and
elsewhere have been protesting in support of their kinsmen. And if
the Crimean Tatars are mistreated under Russian control this is like
to turn the Turkic-speaking and Muslim world against Russia.
While working for UNHCR I also witnessed what another small Muslim
nation also deported by Stalin 1944, in their case from southern
Georgia, had to experience from Russian Cossacks and an a hostile
regional administration in the Krasnodar region. Thousands of them
had ended up stranded there after Georgia did not allow them to return
to their homeland. The hatred and abuses which they encountered was
investigated by a joint mission of UNHCR, OSCE and the Council of
Europe in which I participated. Eventually, quietly, and still not
generally known, some 9,000 of the Meshketian Turks were resettled in
2005 -06 in the United States. A similar fate for the Crimean Tatars
has to be prevented.
The OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Astrid Thors, has
already expressed concern about the danger in which the Crimean Tatars
find themselves. “I am alarmed about the risk of violent conflict on
the Crimean peninsula and the effects this could have on all
communities, particularly the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar groups,” she
stated in Kyiv on 6 March. Like the Ukrainian community, Crimean
Tatars have taken a different position to the majority population,
which increases their vulnerability. Relations between ethnic groups
on the peninsula are characterized by a growing climate of fear,” she
warned.
Official Kyiv has never been consistent in its stance towards the
Crimean Tatars and has tended to notice them only when pro-Russian
forces in the peninsula have been active. It has turned a blind to
Crimean Tatar calls for greater empowerment and a greater degree of
recognition of them as national minority and indigenous people in the
form of an autonomous status, and local authorities have done little
to prevent expressions of hostility from local Russians, often taking
the form of virtual pogroms. In 2013, a survey carried out by USAID
with others showed that 53 per cent of Crimea’s population wanted
autonomy within Ukraine, and that in addition, 12 percent, that is
virtually all of the Crimean Tatars, wanted a Crimean Tatar autonomy
within Ukraine.
The Crimean Tatar factor will need to be recognized in any future
settlement of the current crisis. If the Russians get to keep Crimea,
directly or by proxy, the rights of the Crimean Tatars will need to be
placed under close international protection. If Crimea remains under
Kyiv’s jurisdiction, the loyalty and fortitude of the Crimean Tatars
should be recognized. They should be given an appropriate form of
autonomy and proper representation in the political and economic
management of Crimea.
Bohdan Nahaylo is a former senior policy adviser and representative in the field at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
