Ukraine urges world to recognize 1944 Crimean Tatar deportation as genocide

The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, has formally appealed to the international community to recognize the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars by Soviet authorities as an act of genocide. 

The resolution passed with 310 votes in favor on May 14, just days before the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Crimean Tatar Genocide, observed annually on May 18.

“The appeal urges governments and parliaments worldwide to recognize these crimes as genocide, following the example of Latvia, Lithuania, Canada, Poland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, and to unite efforts to hold Russia accountable for both past and ongoing crimes in occupied Crimea,” wrote Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatar people and Ukrainian parliamentarian.

The 1944 deportation, ordered by dictator Joseph Stalin, forcibly relocated over 200,000 Crimean Tatars from their ancestral homeland to remote areas of Central Asia and Siberia. 

The operation was carried out by the NKVD (Soviet secret police), and entire families were given little time to gather belongings before being packed into overcrowded cattle cars. Accused of en masse collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II, the deportees were never individually tried or investigated. 

More than 80 years later, Russia continues its genocidal policies against subjugated peoples, Dzhemilev added. 

He pointed to “the occupiers’ systematic efforts in Crimea to displace the indigenous people from their homeland and to resettle the peninsula with Russian citizens.”

Dzhemilev also highlighted “harsh persecutions for any signs of disloyalty to the occupiers, severe prison sentences handed down by occupation courts even for social media posts, inhumane torture in detention centers, as well as documented cases of abductions and murders.”

In his parliamentary speech, Dzhemilev stressed that the people of occupied Crimea deeply appreciate this new declaration by Ukraine’s parliament.

“They see that the state has not forgotten them and believe that, sooner or later, the occupiers will be driven from their land,” he said.

Earlier, the Ukrainian World Congress also called on governments and international organizations to recognize the Crimean Tatars’ deportation as genocide. We continue to urge all Ukraine’s allies to provide united military support so Ukraine can free all its territories from brutal and deadly Russian occupation.