The Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, has swiftly degenerated into the scene of the greatest repression being conducted anywhere in the entire country.

The targets of the Kremlin’s crackdown are the Crimean Tatars, the ethnic group that originally formed the Crimean nation on the Black Sea peninsula. Between the 13th and 18th centuries the Tatars enjoyed their own state, and since 2014 they have been campaigning to return their homeland to Ukrainian rule. For this they have become the collective enemy of Russia.

They are now victims of hate and persecution, and not for the first time in their tragic history. In May 1944, Joseph Stalin ordered the mass resettlement of Tatars, after accusing them of collaborating with the Nazis. At the time they made up about a fifth of the total population of the Crimeanpeninsula. More than 230,000 people, including almost the entire Crimean Tatar population, were deported, mostly to Uzbekistan.

Those who survived the deportation were only allowed to return after perestroika 45 years later. Even then, communist authorities gave them a hostile reception.

But after 25 years in independent Ukraine, the Tatars had rebuilt their communities from scratch. They formed the only nation in the former Soviet Union with its own democratic governing body, the mejlis, with no help from the state.

Thanks to this elected body and its long-time head, Mustafa Dzhemilev, a Soviet-era dissident, Crimean Tatars became semi-autonomous within Ukraine, while supporting the country’s pro-European leanings.

In 2014, the Tatars boycotted the sham and illegal referendum organised by Russia. The Kremlin hailed the result as a “vote” for Crimea to join the Russian Federation. This dissent kickstarted a new and brutal phase of Tatar oppression.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Crimean Tatar man prays at a mosque in Bakhchisarai after the annexation. Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP

Today, less than 300,000 people – below 15% of the peninsula’s population – is Tatar. In the two years since annexation more than 21,000 Tatars have left because of an intensifying atmosphere of hatred and repression, and the exodus shows no signs of slowing.

The nature of this repression is highlighted by the fact that more than 90% of those in prison in the region are accused of political crimes. A large majority of those declared missing since the annexation are from the Tatar community.

Mejlis leaders such as Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov, alongside other public figures and journalists of Tatar origin, have been forced to leave Crimea, prohibited from visiting their homeland by Russia.

The first signs of the crackdown started in 2014, when Tatars were forbidden from holding mass gatherings, even on 18 May, the official day for commemorating the 1944 deportations.

In spring 2015, the Russian authorities banned Tatar TV channels and press outlets. ATR, the Crimean Tatar TV channel, was closed down, as well as the radio station Meydan FM and even a children’s TV channel, Lale.

Since then, the situation has become increasingly dangerous, to the point that parents now accompany their children to school for fear of abduction. Young Tatar are even told not to wear clothes with ethnic elements. Last year, Nariman Jelyalov, the deputy president of the mejlis, published a personal safety manual, recommending Tatars only move around in groups in well-lit public places.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Refat Chubarov addresses a rally in Simferopol in 2014. Photograph: Max Vetrov/AP

In order to maintain the atmosphere of fear among Tatars, Russian security forces – complete with dogs and armed masked men – have been conducting regular raids. People are fined, arrested and put on trial en masse for anything that reminds the Russian authorities of the existence of Crimean Tatars, from national flags to supposedly banned literature.

Last month, the entire system of Crimean Tatar self-rule, comprising more than 2,000 elected delegates, was declared to be an extremist organisation by the supreme court of Russia, and participating members are now being threatened with incarceration for taking part in “illegal gatherings”.



For his support for the territorial integrity of his country, Akhtem Chiygoz, the deputy chairman of the mejlis, has been in prison for 18 months, while Ilmi Umerov, a former head of the Bakhchisarai district administration, the ancient capital of the Crimean Tatars, was put in a psychiatric ward for a humiliating psychiatric examination. He was eventually found sane.

There are now more than 20 Crimean Tatars in Russian prisons, and the number is steadily increasing. Others have faced kidnap, and even death. The most infamous abduction in Crimea happened in May, when a group of people in military uniforms abducted Ervin Ibragimov, one of the leaders of the World Congress of Crimean Tatars, in front of CCTV cameras. His fate is unknown. Many in the Tatar community presume he is dead.

There are no barbed-wire fences in this new hybrid ghetto of Vladimir Putin’s – yet. Instead of wire there is hate-filled TV propaganda, total surveillance and constant harassment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tatar men on patrol to keep outsiders out of their neighbourhood in Bakhchisarai in 2014. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The Tatars have been picked for the outcast role. Russian authorities in Crimea are busy erecting monuments to the persecutors of the Tatars: Stalin and Catherine the Great. Crimean Tatars are afraid to speak to journalists and human rights activists – and to each other. Meanwhile, their neighbours are busy writing reports to the authorities and want to know when the Tatars will get the hell out of “our Russian Crimea”.

Crimean Tatars are banned from speaking their native language at work. If they use it outside their own areas people insult them. Parents from Russian and other non-Tatar families prefer to limit their and their children’s contacts with Crimean Tatars.

There is a tradition in “Russian Crimea”: military helicopters circle low above homes during raids carried out on dates that mark tragic events in Crimean Tatar history. They do it for no apparent reasons – just to make the windows shake.

I do not know how many people in Crimea must be killed, driven out and deprived of human dignity before a world that once conquered fascism stands up and defends Crimean Tatars. The international community could, for example, introduce special sanctions to punish Russia for bringing Nazi practices back to Europe.

I know that until that is done, the situation will become catastrophically worse. And in years to come, many will feel ashamed for staying silent today.

Translated by Svetlana Graudt