Ukraine proclaims May 18 as Day of Crimean Tatars' Rights
Annually on May 18 Ukraine is to celebrate Day of Crimean Tatar People's Rights, by order of Ukraine's acting president. The relative order was signed by Verkhovna Rada Chairman and Acting President of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov, the president's press service reported on May 16.
"I decree to annually celebrate May 18 as a Day of Crimean Tatars' Rights in view of the fact that after seventy years of the deportation because of the actions of totalitarian regime of the former USSR, the Crimean Tatar people is again under the threat of discrimination on their native land, to support the struggle of the citizens of Ukraine Crimean Tatars for the maintenance of their rights as representatives of an indigenous people, and according to the Article 112 of the Constitution of Ukraine," the order said. The order comes into force on the day it was posted.
May 18 Crimea marks 70th anniversary of the deportation of Crimean Tatar and other peoples from Crimea.
Citing the tensions in eastern and southern Ukraine, Crimean authorities banned all rallies from May 16 until 6 June in Crimea.
The following decree was signed by Crimean premier Sergey Aksyonov.
"In connection with the ongoing events in the cities of the south-east Ukraine, that caused victims among the civilian population; in order to prevent possible provocations by extremists who may enter the territory of the Republic of Crimea, and to avoid disruption of the holiday season in Crimea, we ban conducting mass actions on the territory of the Republic of Crimea until June 6, 2014," reads the decree.
Annual, the event gathered more than 40 thousand people.
Soviet leader Josef Stalin accused Crimean Tatars of collaborating with Nazi Germany and deported them to Central Asia and eastern Russia. Many of the deportees died on their way into exile. Only in the last years of the Soviet Union were members of the community able to start returning to Crimea in the 1980s.
