Sunday, September 28, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Russian Occupation Authorities Increase Terror Against Crimean Population, Crimean Tatar Leader Says


Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, September 28 – The Russian occupation authorities not only have imposed “systematic discrimination” against the Crimean Tatar people but have conducted mass searches against them and their institutions and organized or looked the other way in cases of kidnaping and disappearances, according to Refat Chubarov, the head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis.

 

            Russian officials like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov say, Chubarov wrote in his blog today, that the Crimean Tatars have all the rights other “citizens of the Russian Federation” have and that he has “not heard about any serious problems.” But reports about such “problems” are available to anyone who is willing to listen (echo.msk.ru/blog/chubarov_refat/1408454-echo/).

 

            On Saturday evening local time, two young Crimean Tatars were abducted by unknown assailants and have disappeared.  Their families and friends immediately informed the force structures, the police and the FSB who said they would check but apparently have done nothing of the kind, Chubarov said.

 

            But given that “the FSB has established total control over all society” and follows “practically every resident of Crimea,” the Crimean Tatar leader said, it is impossible to believe that the Russian occupiers couldn’t say who had committed this latest act of force against the Crimean Tatars.

 

            And yet another reason for skepticism about Russian statements concerning the rights and protection of the Crimean Tatars, Chubarov continued, is the protection the occupiers have been given to the illegal actions of the self-proclaimed “detachments of ‘Crimean Self-Defense.’”  As a result of this pattern, he said, Crimean society is being subjected ever more to real terror.

 

           

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