Round table "Deportation of the Crimean Tatars: historic and legal assessment"

On July 15 this year the Security Service of Ukraine held a round table “Deportation of the Crimean Tatars: historic and legal assessment”. People’s deputies of Ukraine, representatives of the SSU, public organizations, mass media, historians and lawyers participated in the meeting.

Addressing to the audience, the Deputy Head of the SSU Mykola Herasymenko mentioned that, as per the decree of the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, the Security Service of Ukraine in cooperation with the General Prosecutor’s Office is gathering information relating to illegal deportations of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 and other people who were living in the Crimea. Officials are gathering and examining documents on crimes of the totalitarian regime in 1944, establishing and interrogating witnesses. As a result, according to the requirements of the national legislation, the SSU and General Prosecutor’s Office will give their legal assessment of the illicit forcible deportation of the Crimean people.

People’s deputy of Ukraine Mustafa Jemilev stressed that forcible deportation in 1944, executed by Soviet repressive bodies, should be qualified as genocide because according to various calculations from 38 to 46 percents of the Crimean Tatars died during two years of the exile.

Gulnara Bekirova, the Representative of the Commission on the Crimean Tatars genocide analysis to Majlis, told about the situation on archive materials research concerning deportation and stressed upon importance to fix the recollections of alive witnesses of the Crimean Tatars’ catastrophe. Ms. Bekirova informed those present, that three volumes of “How it was” edition with the recollections of the victims of repressions came into public.

One of the Crimean Tatars’ leaders Refat Chubarov stressed upon the necessity to address their requests to the Governments of other countries, whose archives can contain documents about tragic events of May 1944.

Volodymyr Vasylenko, an Authorized Representative of Ukraine in International Court of Justice, in his speech dwelled on the legal technicalities, on which it is necessary to pay attention initiating the criminal case on the Crimean Tatars deportation.