TATARS WANT THEIR OWN ARMED FORCES

President of the Crimean Medjlis Mustafa Djemilev is planning to create Tatar armed forces in the Crimea. He raised this question at a meeting with Ukrainian minister of Defence Anatoly Gritsenko. Mr. Djemilev’s proposal shocked the Slavic population of the Crimea. People still remember Crimean Tatar Nazi units and their atrocities.
From 1941 to 1944 the Crimea had been under Nazi occupation. Germans recruited Crimean Tatars to form eight battalions by November 1942 and more later. All Tatar units became part of the Wehrmacht Crimean Legion. Those units were used to guard military and civil installations. Together with other Wehrmacht forces they took part in operations to ferret out Nazi resistance fighters, their bases and food storages. Tatars helped German and Romanian occupation forces to destroy partisan camps in the mountains. They burnt out populated areas near forest tracts to create a “dead zone” around the bases of bush-fighters. Tatar units guarded concentration camps. Their fighters served in firing squads and participated in mass executions of civilians.
Mr. Djemilev’s request for creation of Crimean Tatar military units has not yet been granted. The Ukrainian Defence Minister did not seem to be sympathetic to such an idea. It is clear Mr. Djemilev was just sounding Mr. Lutsenko on his plans. On the other hand, his remarks also targeted the Slavic majority of the Crimea. They scared the population at large and at the same time, reminded them of the WWII atrocities. Djemilev did it less than two weeks before V-Day celebrations.

RUSSIA WILL REACT TO ANTI-MOSCOW POLICIES BY KIEV

Crimean Newspaper The Krymskaya Pravda interviews two opposition politicians from the Ukraine and Russia. Both of them have recently visited the Crimea.

A Ukrainian and a Russian opposition politicians maintain that the Crimea may be used as a springboard for an invasion of the Ukraine and Russia by the West. Leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of the Ukraine Natalia Vitrenko said to the Crimean newspaper the Krymskaya Pravda (April, 22 2005) that the ruling regime in the Ukraine is nurturing plans to provoke a crisis involving the Russian Black Sea Navy in Sevastopol. Using this crisis as a pretext Kiev will appeal to NATO for help. That could be a way to crash the gate to NATO against the will of the Ukrainian population. “Our people do not want to join NATO, - Mrs. Vitrenko said. The referendum on December 1, 1991 had confirmed it. Voters had adopted a declaration of state sovereignty proclaiming the Ukraine a bloc-free nation”. According to Vitrenko, president of the Ukraine Victor Yushchenko has no other way to fulfill the assignment given to him by George Bush (to turn the Ukraine into a spring-board for a US-lead invasion) as to use the above-mentioned scenario.
Speaking of the Crimean Tatars, Mrs. Vitrenko pointed out that the regime is playing up their hardships for political purposes. “Do other Crimeans have more chances to improve their living standards?” – asked the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party. Mrs. Vitrenko thinks that the existence of the medjlis, unconstitutional Crimean Tatar parliament, spinning out its activities is not accidental.
The actual situation in the Ukraine reminds Mrs. Vitrenko of the 1930s in Nazi Germany. “When Adolf Hitler took over, - said Natalia Vitrenko, he put his people on all key positions in local administrations”. President Yushchenko is doing the same. He is nominating for regions his own “orange” governors. Dissidents in local administrations are being purged. “It is on his orders, I think, that mayors are being pressured into submitting letters of resignation”. Mrs. Vitrenko does not rule out that the resignation of Crimean Prime-Minister Sergey Kunitsyn on April, 25 was obtained through threats and blackmail as in the cases of several other local officials.
Another politician interviewed by the Krymskaya Pravda was deputy of the Russian Duma (lower chamber of Parliament) Victor Alksnis. Member of the Rodina (Fatherland) fraction, Mr. Alksnis, who is of Latvian descent, said that the Crimea is not just a piece of land. Russians and Ukrainians shed blood here. “That’s why it is our common territory, – he said. We should do all our best to prevent it form becoming a springboard for a possible aggression against Russia”. Mr. Alksnis regrets the anti-Russian undercurrents emerging in the foreign policy of today’s Ukrainian leadership. “The Crimea becoming a base for an invasion of Russia is a hard-to-imagine nightmare scenario, - the Deputy of the State Duma pointed out. Unfortunately, there is an impression in Russia that some political forces in the Ukraine have embarked on such course. And those forces are being actively supported by Western circles”. Answering a question on a possible revolution in Russia, Mr. Alksnis responded that a popular uprising is approaching. However, a revolution will not be an “orange” one at all. “It will be anti-Western and anti-liberal, - Victor Alksnis said. And opinion polls reveal such popular feelings. We are witnessing today the only positive phenomenon of the latest 15 years: most Russians have developed allergy to liberal values and Western ideas”. Mr. Alksnis has predicted changes in Russian policy towards the Ukraine if its anti-Russian line would persist. World prices for energy could be charged if Kiev does not stop its present foreign policy against Moscow. The Ukraine depends on Russia for natural gas supplies. Kiev receives gas at $50.00 for 1000 cubic metres whereas the world price is $130.00.
Mr. Alksnis said that the Russian Duma is monitoring the situation in the Crimea. Lawyers and other experts are working on a document on the Crimea that will be produced in case of a crisis over the peninsula sparked by the Ukrainian side. “If the Ukrainian leadership wants to have brotherly and good-neighbour relations with Russia and that the Crimea stays under Ukrainian rule it should remember that Russia has huge interests in the region. One should not forget that the Crimea is a Russian land and that it got under Ukrainian jurisdiction owing to the force of circumstances. We may raise this question at a very high level. Everything will depend on the attitude of the Ukrainian government”.

(Based on Krymskaya Pravda, 22 April 2005)

Patriotic bloc formed in Crimea

SIMFEROPOL, April 17, 2005 (Itar-Tass) - The patriotic forces of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea held a meeting on Saturday and laid flowers to the monuments to soldiers who liberated the Crimea from the Turks and Nazi occupiers. Wreaths were also laid to the monument to Russian military leader Alexander Suvorov. The forum of the patriotic forces was timed to coincide with the 222nd anniversary of the re-unification of Crimea with Russia that is marked on April 19.

The forum had been convened on the initiative of the republican organization of the Slav Party of Ukraine, the Congress of Russian Communities of the Crimea, the Crimean Association of Russian Compatriots and Cossack associations. “All who have gathered here love their small homeland – the Crimea- and won’t allow Ukrainian nationalists to erase this date from history. We will repel any attempts to sever our brethren ties with Russia,” Sergei Shuvainikov, the head of the forum’s organizing committee and a member of the Crimean parliament, said.

The patriotic bloc, “To Future with Russia!”, was created with an aim to unite the patriotic forces to ensure victory at elections to the Crimean parliament next March. The forum adopted a declaration containing the bloc’s election program and urged the ethnic communities of the Crimea to unite efforts to stop the activities of the Crimean Tatar radicals who are pushing the republic’s population towards an inter-ethnic conflict.

CRIMEA TURNING INTO A HOT SPOT

The situation in the Crimea is getting tense. According to reports from Kiev, the National Security Council of the Ukraine will discuss a proposal to ban the Muslim fundamentalist group Hizb-ut-Takhrir that operates openly in the Crimean peninsula. This group is blacklisted as a terrorist organization in many countries. Until recently the Ukraine has been closing her eyes on its activities in the Crimea hoping, as some analysts think, to play the fundamentalists off against the Russian-speaking majority opposed to Ukrainian rule. Today a group of Tatar militants has held a demonstration at the building of the regional Parliament in Simferopol. They have demanded to release a group of individuals convicted of ransacking a night club in Simferopol and beating up TV journalists. Another protest has been held today at the building of the self-proclaimed Tatar parliament - “medjlis”. A group of people were peacefully demonstrating in scuba diving gear. They are angry at a recent takeover by Tatar activists of a diving centre. The militants supported by the “medjlis” claim the land of the Shelf Diving Centre near Sudak, a small town in a scenic area on the Black Sea shore. They think Tatars have historic right to settle anywhere in the Crimea. The illegal “medjlis” officials got mad at the demonstrators. One of them even said that Tatars did not forget how to pull a trigger.

Illegal Crimean Tatar “Parliament” Might be Sanctioned

<>Monday, April 11, 2005

Representative of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir international Islamic political organization in the Crimea Abdusalam Selyametov was detained in Simferopol on April 05 for appeals to legalize the Hizb-ut-Tahrir Party, which is outlawed in many countries. He was charged with illegal engagement in politics. According to Ukrainian laws, a political group should be registered with the Ministry of justice otherwise it is considered illegal and is subject to sanctions. But a militant Tatar self-styled parliament “medjlis” has never undergone any registration. However it operates quite openly, mostly engaged in staging protests, squattering and illegal land grabbing. On April 12 Crimean Police Chief Khomenko threatened to crack down on all illegal political groups. When asked about the “medjlis” Mr. Khomenko hinted that it could also face sanctions. No reaction from the Tatar militants has been voiced yet. Observers think that the “medjlis” will ignore the statement of the police chief and will remain defiant as usual.