The decision to seize Crimea from Ukraine was made five years ago, on the night of February 22, 2014, when Russian chiefs in a Kremlin meeting leadership sealed the peninsula’s fate.
By his own account in television broadcast of 2015 Vladimir Putin himself discounted the claims of legitimacy of the takeover that Moscow insisted made their move legally acceptable. The Kremlin decision was made fully three weeks before Russia-controlled sham referendum. Also, by Putin’s own account Russian insistence that it was forced to act to protect the local Russian population was also misleading.
The formal annexation of Crimea into the Russian Federation was executed on March 18, 2014. Thus 10,000 square miles that Russian grabbed from Ukraine broke the first principle of international law. Acquiring territories or changing borders by force is strictly forbidden.
In the Budapest memorandum of 1994, Russia also broke its own pledge to respect the “existing borders of Ukraine” and “refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”. This is only one of a long list of international agreements that Russia has violated with respect to Ukraine.
Since 2014 reports from Crimea have detailed the oppression of the indigenous Tartar population and the harassment of all opposed to the Russian annexation. About 180,000 people from Russia have been resettled in Crimea, while 35,000 have been forced to leave. Conditions in locations have been made untenable forcing Ukrainians and Crimean Tatar activists to leave their native Crimea. International law clearly forbids the forcible replacement of the residents of the region. This forced movement of local peoples is tantamount to deportation.
Tens of thousands of Tatars have fled north to various parts of Ukraine. Once holding the majority of the majority 2.5 million Crimean population, the Muslim Tatar community accounts for only 12 percent today. For decades the Tatars have basically opposed Moscow’s rule and this has made them prime targets of Russia repression.
Witnesses have reported human rights violations, repressions, sham criminal court cases. Arrests have numbered 139, of which 108 involved Tartars. Serving illegal sentences currently are 19 political prisoners in colonies in the Russian Federation. Awaiting pre-trial are 27 Tatars who have been detained in Russian prisons.
International media has been banned from Crimea and freedom of speech is strictly curtailed. Some 200 journalists have been forced to leave Crimea.
In March of 2014 thousands of Ukrainian citizens became Russian citizens without being asked. But some 3500 Ukrainian citizens refused and kept their Ukrainian passports. Now this is considered to be an act of heroism. This number would be much larger if people had been allowed more than two weeks to apply to refuse Russian citizenship. It’s estimated that at least five times more would have applied if the line-ups waiting to apply were shorter. In 2014 a quota of 5400 had been set by occupying authorities.
Realistically Crimea has been conveniently forgotten by the outside world. Sanctions are still in place but, there is a silent understanding that Russia has accomplished successfully by force and nothing will change this.
The West has ignored the tragic struggle of the Tatars, their history of deportations from their homeland, their fight to return. It is the 12 percent of the Crimean population, the Tatars, to whom the torch of protest has been passed. They alone have the courage to protest the “illegal occupation” and thus are paying a dreadful price at the hands of the Russian FSB. Some 50 young Tartars have disappeared since the annexation.
Few Tatars will ever abandon their right to their homeland. Every year they still commemorate Stalin’s mass deportations of their ancestors. At the very least, the media should draw attention to fate of the Tatars and remind the West the utter disregard for international norms when Russia, on a neo-imperialistic impulse decided to assume ownership of foreign territory.
The Crimea story and its connection to Estonians will continue in a future installment.
Laas Leivat
