Ethnic Strife Builds in Crimea

Recent weeks have seen ethnic strife between repatriated Crimean Tatars and Slavs in Crimea, an autonomous republic in Ukraine, reach a fever pitch. The Black Sea peninsula is the ancestral homeland of the Crimean Tatars, who were deported en masse to Central Asia by Stalin in 1944 for alleged collaboration with Nazi occupiers in World War II. As I explained in a previous post – which can be found here: http://www.salzburgseminar.org/ihjr/blog/index.cfm?mode=day&day=14&month=6&year=2007 – the notion that the Crimean Tatars were wrongly accused of treason and wrongly oppressed for decades has not seemed to reach some Ukrainians and Russians in Crimea. Today, the descendents of the Crimean Tatar deportees who have returned to the peninsula encounter consistent and concerted resistance from local authorities in their efforts to reclaim land, property, and respect. Many have been left with no other choice than to squat on land tracts and build settlements for their families.

On November 1, a makeshift brigade of so-called Sevastopol' Cossacks – nothing less than a vigilante group – stormed one such settlement in the capital Simferopol', destroying houses and reportedly beating women and children. When Berkut (Golden Eagle) special forces under the control of the Crimean directorate of the Ministry of the Interior arrived at the scene, they allegedly joined in on the destruction instead of protecting the vulnerable. On November 6, a secret deployment of approximately 1,000 Sokol (Falcon) and Berkut (Golden eagle) forces raided the plateau of Ai-Petri, a popular tourist site near Yalta on Crimea's southern shore, in order to carry out a court order to demolish seven cafés illegally built by Crimean Tatars. (The original court order called for the demolition of only one café; this number increased to seven apparently after the fact.) The raid was marked by violence at the hands of the Berkuty, video footage of which can be seen here: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/67257.html. Lying down in front of bulldozers – in the spirit of nonviolent resistance that has characterized their movement for decades – Crimean Tatar men can be heard yelling that they are ready to die in defense of their property.

There is a cold economic side to these events: the property on the Ai-Petri plateau is a veritable gold mine for developers. But they nevertheless reek badly of ethnic discrimination: the cafés and stores built there by Slavs – likely outside the law, to varying degrees – were untouched and unaffected by the court order and the resulting Berkut raid.

This strife shows little signs of abating any time soon. As the video footage sadly demonstrates, this is an issue of a pacific minority seeking justice against an aggressive local state apparatus avoiding it at any cost. What is our role in such a scenario?

Thanks for continuing to inform us about this situation.