Solidarity with the Crimean Tatar People

May 18, 2016

OTTAWA

Today the Ukrainian Canadian community stands in solidarity with the Crimean Tatar People who mark the anniversary of the mass deportation from their ancestral homeland by the totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin. The entire Crimean Tatar People, the indigenous people of Crimea, were exiled to the Soviet east in 1944. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were forcibly and violently deported – almost half lost their lives during the first year of exile – for no crime other than their language, culture and traditions. They were not allowed to return to Crimea for almost 50 years.

In November 2015, Ukraine’s Parliament recognized this crime as an act of Genocide against the Crimean Tatar People and established May 18 as the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People. Today, we join the Crimean Tatar People in mourning, grief and solemn commemoration.

The ancestral home of the Crimean Tatar People, the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine, is today illegally occupied by the Russian Federation. The Mejlis, the Representative Assembly of the Crimean Tatar People, has been banned by the Russian occupation authorities. The Crimean Tatar People, bravely resisting this cruel occupation, are once again subject to brutal violence, repressions, arrests and attacks on their unalienable rights and freedoms by the Russian occupation authorities. We join all civilized nations in condemning the Russian Federation’s occupation of the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine.

To view this on the UCC website, please click here: Remembering the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People