Tatars of Crimea

[Bengal_Tiger]

The Tatars of Crimea are Muslims.

Being Muslim they are thus part of the Islamic ummah ("Al-Ummatul Islamiyaah") and must be supported by Muslims across the world. I believe that most people in Crimea want to join Russia rather than being ruled by an illegal regime in Kiev. However I call for the respect of Crimean Tatars and their rights.

I do not support a Chechen-style insurgency against Moscow as that is the goal of the US to destabilize the region. Whilst the US gloats over Muslims and Slavs fighting each other, Muslims and Slavs will be the ones killed and shedding tears.

The US plan has long been to activate a "Jihad" in the Crimea against Russia.

So to conclude.

1. Tatar (Muslim) rights must be respected by Russians/Ukranians.

2. Tatars must not fall for the American trap of fighting the Russians.



The situation in Crimea is now quite alarming.





A hotel and two cars belonging to Crimean Tatars have been burnt down


Згорів готель та два автомобіля - YouTube

http://censor.net.ua/photo_news/274950/bandity_sojgli_dom_i_mashiny_tatarskoyi_semi_v_krymu_fotoreportajvideo

[Bengal_Tiger]

Tatars warn Russia risks provoking jihadi backlash in Crimea


By Guy Chazan in Simferopol

Russia risks a repeat of its bloody entanglements in Chechnya if it annexes Crimea a senior Crimean Tatar leader has warned, with extremist elements in the community threatening jihadi-style violence against Russian troops occupying the peninsula.

Mustafa Jemilev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, said a number of militant Tatars had approached him to say they would fight the Russians.


“We have Islamists, Wahhabis, Salafis . . . groups who have fought [with the opposition] in Syria,” he said in an interview in Simferopol, the Crimean capital. “They say: ‘an enemy has entered our land and we are ready’.
“We can’t stop people who want to die with honour,” he said, making he clear he did not endorse a jihadist campaign.

The warning underscores the potential dangers facing Moscow as it tightens its grip on Crimea. A referendum on whether Crimea should become part of Russia has been scheduled for next Sunday.
Annexation of Crimea would not only exacerbate the east-west crisis triggered by Russia’s occupation of the peninsula, but could also deepen ethnic and religious divisions in Crimea itself, increasing the risk of communal strife and even armed conflict, local leaders say. Opposition to Russia is most intense among the Crimean Tatars, a Muslim minority who number about 280,000 and make up roughly 12 per cent of the region’s population.
There is also a danger for Russia that the Crimean crisis could become internationalised, with foreign jihadis taking up arms against Russia much as they did during the Chechen war in the early 2000s.
Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and an expert on jihadist movements in Syria, said Russia’s invasion was already being actively discussed on social media and internet forums frequented by Islamic militants. “People are asking whether events [there] would legitimise the opening of a new jihadi front,” he said.
He added that the chatter was limited at this stage and there was no indication yet that foreign fighters were heading for Crimea.



Links already exist between some Crimean Tatars and the global Islamist militant network, with a number of Tatars having fought with the armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. One of them, under the nom de guerre “Abu Khaled”, carried out a suicide bombing in Aleppo last year.
Analysts have noted that the hashtag #NafirforUkraine has appeared hundreds of times on Twitter in recent days. A term meaning a call to action, the word nafir circulated on social media in the early stages of the conflict in Syria, and is believed to have played a role in encouraging foreign fighters to join the opposition cause.

Anxiety among Crimean Tatars has its roots in their tragic history under Russian rule, which began when Catherine the Great annexed the region in 1783. Josef Stalin deported the entire Tatar population in 1944, on the pretext that they had collaborated with the Nazis.
Liniyar Belyalova was nine years old in May 1944 when Soviet soldiers arrived at her house and rounded up her family. They were taken in the clothes they stood in, put on crowded railway freight wagons and sent to Uzbekistan, thousands of miles away. “So many old people died on the train,” she recalls. “They wouldn’t let us bury them, we had to throw their bodies out of the window.”


Ms Belyalova, 79, was one of tens of thousands of exiled Crimean Tatars who made their way home from central Asia during the perestroika era of the late 1980s, seizing empty land and building homes.
She now lives in Bakhchisaray, a largely Tatar town dominated by a 16th-century palace that was home to the Crimean Tatar khans, or local leaders. But with the region now full of Russian troops, she fears a second deportation.
“[Russian president Vladimir] Putin just needs the land, he doesn’t want the people in it,” she says. “He’ll just kick us out if he needs to.”

Mr Jemilev, a former head of the Mejlis, the main Tatar communal organisation, said Crimea’s new pro-Russian leaders have tried to reassure Tatars that they have nothing to fear from Russian rule.
He said they had offered a comprehensive deal, promising Tatars the post of deputy prime minister of a Russian-governed Crimea, three ministries and official recognition of their communal organisations. They have also pledged financial help for returning Tatars and even committed to reinstating the original Tatar names of some towns and villages.
But Mr Jemilev said he and other leaders are reluctant to sign a deal with politicians they consider to be stooges of Moscow. “This agreement is not worth the paper it’s written on,” he said. “Everything can change tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, other figures in the community are calling for calm. “We’re telling our fathers and sons to keep cool, to be patient – the last thing we need is bloodshed,” says Safure Kadjametova, a Tatar member of the Crimean parliament. “But their patience is running out.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/17bd814e-a7ab-11e3-9c7d-00144feab7de.html#axzz2vUymmfd5

* America used the "Islamic" card against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

* America operates "Al-Qaeda" which causes bloodshed and mayhem through out the Muslim world killing Muslims in Africa, the Middle east and Asia.

*America is dying to use the "Islamic" card against Russia in Crimea, as they did in Afghanistan and Chechnya.


The question is can Russian intelligence and strategists torpedo the American plan of causing bloodshed and mayhem in Crimea?

[Bengal_Tiger]

Ukraine: Putin Attempts To Woo Crimean Tatars



by PETER MARZALIK on 3/7/2014 · 1 COMMENT


Earlier this week, Rustam Minnikhanov, President of Russia’s Republic Tatarstan and emissary of the Kremlin, arrived in Crimea to meet with Tatar leaders, likely reiterating restraint following recent clashes with the local Russian population over Russian intervention in Ukraine. The visit culminated in the signing of a cooperation agreement with the recently installed, pro-Russian Prime Minister of Crimea, Sergei Aksionov. Both leaders promised to pursue closer economic and cultural ties between the two autonomous republics in the coming weeks.



Rustam Minnikhanov, (centre) president of Tatarstan during umrah pilgrimage in Mecca. Russia and Tatarstan are working together to prevent US efforts to destabilize Crimea and cause a Syria-style insurgency there.

Significantly, Minnikhanov declared that the new partnership not only aims to promote increased collaboration on investment, tourism, sports, education, and health care but also moral support, “The Crimean Tatars are our brothers. They lived through a great tragedy; we cannot be indifferent to their fate. Most important today is to ensure calm, interethnic and interreligious harmony in Crimea. This is the problem that now confronts us all.”

It is likely that this is the latest attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to woo Crimean Tatars, who represent 12% of the largely Russian population in the region according to a 2001 national census. Two delegations of Volga Tatar officials as well as Tatarstan’s Grand Mufti Kamil Samigullin also held talks with Crimean Tatar leaders over the past several days. Initial reports suggest the general response of the Crimean Tatar community to the cooperation agreement has been positive.

Moscow’s maneuvers come amidst dangerous tensions between the Tatar and Russian peoples in Crimea. Thousands of Crimean Tatars clashed with pro-Russian demonstrators in the Crimean capital of Simferopol last week, fueling fears of potential interethnic violence. Self-defense units have started to appear in local Tatar neighborhoods in preparation to confront unidentified gunmen, widely assumed to be Russian troops, who seized strategic sites across Crimea in February.

The majority of Crimean Tatars staunchly oppose the proposed referendum for Russian reintegration. With an historical legacy dating back to the military campaigns of Genghis Khan, this Turkic people, still haunted by their massive and deadly deportation to Central Asia during the rule of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, remain fiercely suspicious of Russia. Since their return in 1989, the Crimean Tatars have become a well-organized and politically mobilizable group, peacefully struggling to improve their minority economic status. If their activism turns violent, they would pose a serious threat to Russian interests in Crimea as well as at home and abroad.

As Oxana Shevel, Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at Tufts University, insists, “Whatever the Tatar grievances against the Ukrainian state may be, when faced with the choice of being either under Russian or Ukrainian control, the Crimean Tatar leadership has consistently and unequivocally chosen Ukraine.”

This reality explains the recent efforts by President Putin to soften relations with the pro-Ukrainian Tatars, preemptively trying to undermine a potential resistance movement through diplomatic persuasion. Protests across Russia including in Tatarstan’s capital of Kazan further showcase public solidarity with the Russian and Tatar peoples in Crimea. However, Russia’s bid to reacquire Crimea will likely still face strong opposition by the Crimean Tatars in the form of primarily peaceful demonstrations that could easily lead to bloodshed when provoked.

Russia risks hurting its influence in the Middle East if compelled to crack down on the Crimean Tatar population. Already strained due to the Syrian conflict, Turko-Russian relations would deteriorate further. President Putin has coordinated with Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan to ensure frequent political contact throughout the Ukrainian crisis.

Directly repressing the Crimean Tatars also threatens to compromise Russia’s domestic security, particularly in the North Caucasus and Volga-Ural regions. Such turmoil could result in increasing unrest incited by regional Islamic extremist and ethnic nationalist groups. Often associated with radicalism, the pan-Islamic organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir is legal in Ukraine and may work to rally Sunni Muslims toward the Crimean Tatar cause. Another group called Azatlyk, which harbors separatist aspirations for Tatarstan, also organized a small protest in Kazan to support the Euromaidan movement in December.

For now, President Putin appears to be taking several steps to woo the Crimean Tatars through diplomatic means. But with the referendum on March 16th likely to result in reintegration, Russia will face even greater challenges in Crimea, struggling to control a frustrated Tatar minority and to withstand growing pressure from Kiev and the West.

http://registan.net/2014/03/07/ukraine-putin-attempts-to-woo-crimean-tatars/

Mufti of Tatarstan, who also visited the Crimea recently in order to prevent US plans to destabilize the region and cause suffering for Muslims.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Tatarstan mufti calls for peaceful solution to Ukrainian crisis

3 March 2014 - 2:31pm

Kamil Samigullin, Head of the Tatarstan Muslim Administration, met with representatives of the Crimean Tatars yesterday and called for a peaceful solution to the situation in Ukraine, ITAR-TASS reports.Deputy Mufti Rustam Batrov who is currently in Simferopol, said that Samigullin met with elders of the Crimean-Tatar people and Rifat Chubarov, Head of the Majlis. Samigullin emphasized that the situation in the Crimea should be resolved peacefully.Samigullin is on his way to Moscow.

Kamil Samigullin, Head of the Tatarstan Muslim Administration, met with representatives of the Crimean Tatars yesterday and called for a peaceful solution to the situation in Ukraine, ITAR-TASS reports.
Deputy Mufti Rustam Batrov who is currently in Simferopol, said that Samigullin met with elders of the Crimean-Tatar people and Rifat Chubarov, Head of the Majlis. Samigullin emphasized that the situation in the Crimea should be resolved peacefully.
Samigullin is on his way to Moscow.

http://vestnikkavkaza.net/news/society/52075.html

*America's "clash of civilizations" agenda to destabilize old-world rivals including the use of radical Islam sees Crimea as a hotspot between Islam and Orthodoxy.

It also sees Crimea as a potential conflict zone between the Turkic world and Russia. Therefore America feels it cannot miss a valuable opportunity to cause trouble and mischief in this region.

One reason why Erdogan and the AKP were heavily promoted by the western media as "leaders of the Muslim world" and neo-Ottomans was precisely to elevate the status of Turkey to a major global power in order to cause problems for Russia and China both of whom have Turkic Muslim minorities and terrorist activities against them.

However Erdogan has lost a lot of power in the past few months (ever since his regime allowed an attack on the Bangladeshi embassy in Ankara) and is seen by many Turks as a corrupt politician. A Turkish friend of mine, for example, no longer supports the AKP but the MHP (Turkish nationalists).



Erdogan with Obama. The rise of a globally powerful Turkey, assertive and aggressive is/was a very important part of the American "clash of civilizations" agenda to destabilize its rivals using religious/ethnic fault lines. However Erdogan has lost a lot of power and popularity in the past few months, and Turkey and America were defeated in Syria by the Russia-China-Iran axis. This is a major setback for the American regime.


China and Russia know that America wants to use "Jihadists" and Takfiris to cause trouble for them. However insha'Allah China and Russia will succeed in preventing the Americans from causing more conflict, terror and suffering.

They plan and Allah plans and Allah is the best of planners.

[Bengal_Tiger]

I don't know how much of the below is propaganda, but Russia must respect Muslim/Tatar rights in the Crimea.

Russia wants to give Tatars 20% of seats in the Crimean parliament and make Tatar an official language, rights which the Ukranians never gave them. However this will take time.

As I said I don't know how much of the content in the article below is anti-Russian western propaganda but the Muslim ummah supports the Tatars.



Tatars Debate Own Crimean Referendum


Muslim community opposes annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia



BY: Anna Borshchevskaya
March 26, 2014 2:25 pm

Crimean Tatars may hold their own referendum on whether to join Russia or Ukraine.

Refat Chubarov, chairman of the Majlis of the Crimean Tatars, said that on March 29 the 250-member Majlis will discuss the future of Crimea’s Tatars, including the possibility of holding a referendum.

Crimean Tatars do not feel they belong with Russia, Chubarov told Reuters on March 25.

“No one asked us, not before the referendum, not before the stationing of [Russian] troops [into Crimea], how we want to live,” he said, adding that while Tatars are a minority in Crimea, they too consider it their land.

Chubarov is concerned that some Tatars may end up in a situation where they would have no choice but to accept Russian passports simply to avoid legal difficulties due to Ukraine’s refusal to recognize dual citizenship.

“People may be forced to become citizens of a country that forced this situation upon them or end up citizens of a country that was unable to protect them,” he said referring to Russia and Ukraine, respectively, according to Russian Deutsche Welle.

Earlier, Crimean Tatar activist Nedim Khalilov announced the intention of Crimean Tatars to revive their national liberation movement, Rosbalt reported on March 23.

“We are in the process of resuming the national liberation movement. We do not want to use weapons. At this stage, we primarily seek recognition of our rights and do not yet consider ourselves Russia’s property, “ he told Islamnews.ru. “Ukraine it seems did not agree to transfer Crimea to Russia’s protection, and Russia it seems has already taken this upon itself. But, it turns out, we are in limbo, and no one can defend us.”

Crimean Tatars boycotted the earlier referendum held in Crimea on March 16, where the voters were given a choice of independence or joining Russia, but not keeping the status quo. Russian troops were already stationed in Crimea at the time.

Gazeta.ru reported that while the new Crimean authorities promise to uphold the rights of Crimea’s Tatars, the parliament building in Simferopol, which used to have signs in Ukrainian and Tatar languages, now only has one—in Russian.

Crimean Tatars are beginning to leave the peninsula out of concern for their safety. According to Ukrainian parliament deputy and former Majlis chairman Mustafa Jamilev, 5,000 Crimean Tatars have already left for Western Ukraine, Rosbalt reported on March 25.

Tatars have also fled to other countries in the region. Poland has given temporary refuge to eight Crimean Tatar families who asked for refuge because they feared for their lives, while Latvia is also getting ready to accept Tatar refugees.

Crimean Tatars have reportedly spoken out before about pressure, threats, and blackmail from the new Crimean government.

Last week, the head of Tatars Union of Latvia, Adas Jakubauskas, discussed the situation of Crimean Tatars in an interview with NR Baltija.

“Tatars are given an ultimatum: either transfer to Russia’s authority, or we will take away all of your property,” he reportedly said.

According to Jamilev, those who have left Crimea are primarily women and children, while the men are returning to Crimea, as Crimean Tatars will not leave their land, Rosbalt reported.

Rosbalt also reported earlier that Crimean Tatars are beginning to join Ukraine’s National Guard and local militia, according to the National Guard of Ukraine’s chief of staff Vladimir Volkov.

“I just came from Crimea. It’s very bad there,” Volkov said. “Tatars there are our best allies. Now we have in Crimea 2,000 guards who are Crimean Tatars. Tatars are joining the militia very actively.”

Altogether, approximately 300,000 Tatars live in Crimea.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/tatars-may-hold-own-crimean-referendum/

[Bengal_Tiger]

A Tatar's Death Chills Those Who Suffered Under Russia Before

by SCOTT SIMON
March 22, 2014 8:00 AM



Crimean Tatars carry the body of Reshat Ametov during his funeral outside the town of Simferopol on Tuesday.

Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters /Landov

Amid all the of necessary analysis of what Russia's move into Crimea means geopolitically and strategically, it might also be good to remember Reshat Ametov.

Mr. Ametov was buried this week. He was 39 years old, married and the father of three young children.

He was last seen at a demonstration on March 3 in Simferopol, where he joined other Crimean Tatars held a silent protest before the pro-Russian armed men in unmarked uniforms who surrounded the cabinet ministers building.

Tatars make up more than 10 percent of Crimea's population. Many Tatars, who are primarily Sunni Muslim, were brutally deported by Joseph Stalin in the 1940s, and scattered over the deserts of central Asia and Siberia. As many as 200,000 Tatars died in that government removal. Some Tatar families began to come back after Ukraine became independent in the 1990s.

Video from ATR, a local Crimean television channel, shows two armed men in green uniforms, and one in a black uniform, surrounding Reshat Ametov, taking him by the arms, and leading him away.

"He was just standing there and they took him away," Ametov's mother, Refika Ametova, told the Kyiv Post, an independent newspaper. "He stood there for about an hour and a quarter, and I suppose they were waiting for him to leave. But he didn't."

His family called the police, who said they could find nothing. Two weeks later, people in a village about 28 miles away found a man's body in a nearby forest. Local media reports suggested there was clear tape wrapped around his head and hands, and signs of torture.

Reshat Ametov's wife identified the body as her husband's.

Human Rights Watch has called for an investigation into Reshat Ametov's disappearance and death, and they're concerned the crime is not isolated.

"For weeks, armed, masked men who refuse to identify themselves have harassed and intimidated people," says Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. And Crimean Tatars living in Brooklyn and Queens told the New York Daily News that relatives in Crimea report that X's have been slashed in paint on the doors of some Tatar families.

Enver Ablakimov was at Reshat Ametov's funeral. He is 21 years old and told the Kyiv Post, "There were always people here who didn't like us, but before, they hid it. Now with the appearance of the Russian army, they feel protected and understand that no one will do anything."

It's that past that may make Tatars in Crimea apprehensive about the future.

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/22/292401424/a-tatars-death-chills-those-who-suffered-under-russia-before

[Bengal_Tiger]

Crimean Tatars divided between Russian and Ukrainian promises

Ethnic Tatars have lived in region for more than 1,000 years and now report both entreaties and threats, from both Kiev and Moscow

Shaun Walker in Simferopol
Tuesday 17 March 2015 18.14 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 18 March

With a Qur’an on his bookshelf and a large portrait of Vladimir Putin hanging on the wall above him, Zaur Smirnov is convinced that Russia’s annexation of Crimea is good news for his people – the Crimean Tatars.

His view is perhaps surprising when you consider that while the majority ethnic Russian population of Crimea was largely in support of Russia’s moves to take over a year ago, the 13% of the population that is Tatar was seen as the most serious opposition to the Kremlin.

The Tatars largely boycotted the hastily organised “referendum” which led to Russian annexation, and the mejlis, the Tatar governing body, refused to recognise Russian rule. Its leader, Refat Chubarov, and the long-time Tatar figurehead Mustafa Dzhemilev, a Soviet-era dissident, have both been banned from the peninsula by Russia.

The vocal Tatar critics of Moscow have been subjected to deportation, threats and kidnappings. But a year after Russia’s official declaration of the annexation, which will be marked with celebrations in Moscow and Simferopol, the Crimean capital, on Wednesday, many Crimean Tatars feel they need to find a way to interact with the new authorities.

“In the incomplete year of 2014, Russia spent as much as Ukraine did in the previous seven years on issues of housing and support for Crimean Tatars,” said Smirnov, who heads the region’s committee on inter-ethnic relations.

Formerly the deputy head of the mejlis, Smirnov said he had no doubts about going over to work for the Russians. The best example for the Crimean Tatars, he said, was that of Chechnya. “Look at the Chechen people, and the leader of the Chechens, Ramzan Kadyrov. They went through two awful wars, but today they have been reborn as a nation.”

While critics say Kadyrov is responsible for a regime of fear and appalling rights abuses, he has rebuilt Grozny from ruins with Moscow’s money, and the Kremlin is clearly attempting to woo the Crimean Tatars in a similar fashion.


The Tatar people are now scattered over a vast land mass that runs from Mongolia to Finland, with the largest group being the Volga Tatars, who live semi-autonomously within a “federal subject” territory of Russia. Their Crimean brethren remain wary of Moscow after Joseph Stalin had the entire population deported in 1944 for alleged collaboration with the Nazis. Tatars were only allowed to return to Crimea in 1988.

But while the advent of Russian rule has rejuvenated many Crimean Tatars as Ukrainian patriots, some point out that their people did not benefit much from Kiev’s rule either, and it is only now that the government has started pushing the Tatar cause. In the long run, Moscow clearly hopes a combination of this ambivalence to Kiev, plus a combination of money and threats, will bring the population around.

But along with the carrots, there are sticks. Many Tatars say they feel intimidated, or have been openly threatened. “FSB guys came to have a chat with me, they told me to be careful what I said, not to join any movements, not to be political,” said one Tatar business owner in Simferopol, who did not want to give his name.

“They told me to remember I had something to lose and to keep my head down. There’s a total feeling of fear, but what can you do when everyone else around you has gone mad from the television? It’s like we’re living in a rainstorm and people keep telling us how sunny it is.”

Ilmi Umerov, a Tatar who was head of the regional government in the city of Bakhchysarai until August, said: “[Moscow-backed Crimean prime minister Sergei] Aksyonov told me that under Russia everything will be brilliant, we’ll be rolling in money, and that there’s no way back so we have to find a way to cooperate.” He resigned despite the entreaties, refusing to serve the “occupying government”.

Earlier this month, Umerov’s daughter lost her job as a PR manager at Khan’s Palace, the breathtaking complex of buildings that served as the residence for Crimean Tatar rulers before Catherine the Great annexed the territory for Russia the first time around, in the 1780s.

Umerov said only 5% of Crimean Tatars are in favour of working with the Russian authorities, and called them “sellouts and traitors”. Smirnov, meanwhile, put the figure at 70%. The reality is probably somewhere between the two figures.

It is clear that many Crimean Tatars have decided that, unwilling to leave their homeland, it is better to find a modus vivendi with Russia rather than be in permanent opposition. At a court case last week in Simferopol, of three Ukrainian activists who were sentenced to 40 hours of manual labour for waving the national flag in public, two of the police officers giving testimony against them were Tatars. And Smirnov is not the only Tatar in government.

Zair Smedlyayev, a Tatar activist, was questioned on charges of separatism when Ukraine controlled Crimea, for saying that Crimea would one day belong to the Tatars. He underwent a year-long court case in the same Simferopol courthouse.

“Those same guys from the Ukrainian security services who were threatening me and accusing me of separatism are now wearing Russian uniforms. Look who turned out to be the separatists. Us Crimean Tatars have just kept the same position – that this is our homeland and it always will be.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/crimean-tatars-divided-between-russian-and-ukrainian-promises

1. Russia has made Crimea in to a "fort" according to other media reports and may station nuclear missiles there.

It is increasing Russian military troops there from 25,000 to 40,000.



2. Russia is wooing the Crimean Tatars and spending more money on them and their needs than the Ukranian regime ever did.


3. Alongside the "carrot" of money, there is the iron stick of the FSB (Russian Intelligence Services) who are cracking down on any Tatar radicals that they feel may be a threat to Russia or knowingly/unknowingly promoting the western agenda to destabilize Russia.



Crimean Tatars.


Most Crimean Tatars prefer Ukraine to Russia. However Russia will never allow Crimea to go (it's majority Russian any way with the Tatars a small minority around 10% approx) and would go to nuclear war if this super-strategic area were ever to be taken away from her.


The Russians however are better than the Ukranians in that they have given the Crimean Tatar language official legal status.

Russian and Crimean Tatar languages enjoy a "protected" (Russian: обеспечивается ... защита) status; every citizen is entitled, at his request (ходатайство), to receive government documents, such as "Passport, Birth certificate and others" in Crimean Tatar. According to the constitution of Ukraine, however, Ukrainian is the only official language in all of Ukraine, so the recognition of those languages is a matter of political and legal debate

Link

[Badlun]

Everywhere Muslims are trouble creators.

One interesting thing that I saw in the picture YA HUSSAIN. It seems tartars are Shias?

[HalloIsBack]

Everywhere Muslims are trouble creators.

One interesting thing that I saw in the picture YA HUSSAIN. It seems tartars are Shias?

they are sunni!

[Kushan Saka]

The Tatars of Crimea are Muslims.

Being Muslim they are thus part of the Islamic ummah ("Al-Ummatul Islamiyaah") and must be supported by Muslims across the world. I believe that most people in Crimea want to join Russia rather than being ruled by an illegal regime in Kiev. However I call for the respect of Crimean Tatars and their rights.

I do not support a Chechen-style insurgency against Moscow as that is the goal of the US to destabilize the region. Whilst the US gloats over Muslims and Slavs fighting each other, Muslims and Slavs will be the ones killed and shedding tears.

The US plan has long been to activate a "Jihad" in the Crimea against Russia.

So to conclude.

1. Tatar (Muslim) rights must be respected by Russians/Ukranians.

2. Tatars must not fall for the American trap of fighting the Russians.



The situation in Crimea is now quite alarming.





A hotel and two cars belonging to Crimean Tatars have been burnt down


Згорів готель та два автомобіля - YouTube







http://censor.net.ua/photo_news/2749...oreportajvideo

Tatars are discriminated and persecuted in Crimea today. They are not allowed to critizise Putin and the Russian occupation. Crimean Tatars were genocided by Russians and there Land was stolen from them. They were deported to Central Asia and many of them died already before they arrived there. They fear Russian occupation and only after the end of the Soviet Union they could live in Crimea Many of them escaped to Ukraine now and lost anything because of the Russian Invasion. They are quite liberal muslims and had never done any "terrorist" attacks.

http://www.dw.de/crimean-tatars-flee-homes/av-18318969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0i2TyPSx5A

The Russian occupation of Crimea has brought a totalitarian regime that is worse than the Soviet Union, a legendary leader of the Crimean Tatars said Thursday. "The current regime has all the features of the Soviet regime; it is also totalitarian, but at least during Soviet era there was no enforced disappearance of people," Mustafa Dzhemilev told a press conference at the United Nations in New York. To international condemnation, Crimea was formally annexed by Moscow last March after an illegal self-rule vote on the heels of violent anti-government protests in Kiev that led to the overthrow of then-President Victor Yanukovich. The peninsula's 300,000 strong Tatar population boycotted the March 16 referendum that saw the region vote for unification with Russia. Dzhemilev expressed concerns that the situation in Crimea may turn into a protracted conflict similar to ones in Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia. "Because every other day of the occupation brings suffering to our people ... the occupation forces Crimean Tatars to leave Crimea, their homeland, which was reclaimed with great efforts," he said in translated remarks. The Crimean Tatars -- who experienced mass deportation to Central Asia in 1944 under Joseph Stalin's Soviet government -- pride themselves on having waged a successful campaign of passive resistance agasint Soviet authorities under Dzhemilev's leadership.
They are the native population of Crimea since the Mongol invasions in the 13th century.
Dzhemilev said Russia was deploying nuclear arms in the Black Sea peninsula – a development he called "alarming."He said nuclear weapons were reintroduced in the village of Kiziltash, also known as Krasnokamianka, which hosted one of the bases where those weapons had been stored during the Soviet era. "A part of Ukraine under Russian control is becoming a nuclear power again," he warned. Ukraine gave up the world's third largest nuclear weapons stockpile between 1994 and 1996 under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances for Ukraine, signed by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Dzhemilev, also known by his adopted surname Kirimoglu -- son of Crimea -- is the former chairman of the Crimean Tatars' national assembly and a current Ukrainian MP.

http://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/480934--russian-rule-worse-than-soviets-says-crimean-tatar-leader

[Bengal_Tiger]

People need to be careful of propagandistic versions of what is really going on.

1. Russia is not perfect and Putin is no saint but he is far better than the west which by the way covertly backs "Islamist" rebels in Syria-Iraq that are engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the middle east, or which worked with Catholic Croats to expel 0.2 million Orthodox Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia.

Unlike these groups the Crimean Tatars are still in the Crimea and have not been ethnically cleansed.



Orthodox Serbs flee military offensive of US-backed Croat forces. 0.2 million Serbs fled the lands of their forefathers to which they have never returned.


2. The Russians did not enage in the wholescale elimination or expulsion of Crimean Turks after their conquest of the Crimea nor their forcible conversion to Christianity, something which Catholic Spain did and in fact not just unapologetically but with pride labelling this genocide of Muslims as the "Reconquista".

Nor did the Russians exterminate the Crimean Tatars the way the Americans did to the native Indians of America.

If Russia is "evil" for actions committed a century ago then the US is far worse.


3. Many ethnic groups suffered under the communists including Russians.

Soviet policies on the peninsula led to widespread starvation in 1921.
More than 100,000 Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians and other inhabitants of the peninsula starved to death

In May 1944 the entire Crimean Tatar population of Crimea was exiled to Central Asia, mainly to Uzbekistan, on the orders of Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chairman of the USSR State Defense Committee.

The communists expelled the Tatars under the leadership of ethnic Georgian, Joseph Stalin.


4. If we really want to indulge in Russophobia and vilification of Russians then whilst ethnic Georgian Stalin expelled the Tatars it was ethnic Russian Gorbachev who in the 1980s started the process of them returning to Crima.

Anyway historically many races including Muslim ones have committed grave abuses, genocides and heinous atrocities, the Russians are not alone.


5. The question is what should the Crimean Tatars do?

a: Wage a war?

It will not be armchair keyboard warriors who will lose their lives, homes or loved ones but the Tatars themselves.

Many non-Syrian Arabs and Muslims encouraged the Syrians to fight against the Assad regime with the result that Syria now is destroyed with perhaps 1/4 of Syrians refugees.

Russia will never surrender Crimea (majority Russian) in the same way it will never surrender Moscow. It will involve the use of nuclear weapons if there is a serious threat to Russia's control of Crimea.


b: Organize awareness campaigns for their rights.

This entails accepting that Crimea is part of the Russian federation but also working hard to raise awareness of their situation (something which I myself am doing with this particular thread with a Bangladeshi from Britain, Russian from Germany, Afghans from the west all commenting).

If there is media awareness of the situation of the Crimean Tatars especially emanating from someone as pro-Putin as me it (no matter how small) helps to raise awareness of the situation of Tatars.

It embarasses Moscow and damages its image, forcing them to deal with this situation.


What will happen?

My prediction is that Crimea will stay part of Russia as anything else means nuclear war.

Ex-KGB agent Putin will deal against troublemakers with an iron hand including imprisoning them or killing them. Immoral, wrong but far less brutal than Obama and the Americans who have murdered hundreds of thousands in the past few years directly and many more indirectly e.g. US surrogates, the Pakistani Punjabi army.

Some Crimean Tatars will grumble and pine either for independence (for their areas, not very fair on other minorities such as the Kurds and Palestinians if 0.3 million Tatars get independence in relatively tiny areas) or Ukranian rule, but with time the majority will accept that Russian rule is a fait accompli and live accordingly.


Crimean Tatars in Crimea have more rights under Russia than Kurds do in Turkey.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Crimean Tatars to get $600 million

3 March 2015 - 9:43pm

Alexey Goltyayev, the head of the section for universal human rights cooperation in the UN system at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said at the 28th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva that Russia will have granted regions with compact settlements of Crimean Tatars $600 million by 2020, RIA Novosti reports.$25 million were granted for housing and infrastructure construction in 2015.The official reminded that Ukraine had not rehabilitated Crimean Tatars or other peoples throughout the 23 years of independence.

http://tass.ru/en/russia/731608

[Bengal_Tiger]

From last April:

Crimean Tatars to restore the rights of ownership to mosques and Islamic schools

Russia April 01, 1

Crimea’s incorporation into Russia would open new opportunities for Crimean Tatars to build a new life on their own land, the head of the Russian Council of Muftis stresses



MOSCOW, April 01. /ITAR-TASS/. Now that Crimea has become part of Russia, Crimean Tatars will be able to return the mosques and Islamic schools that were once taken away from them under a Russian law on transition of cult property owned by the state or municipal power bodies to religious organizations, Ravil Gainutdin, the head of the Russian Council of Muftis, told a news conference at ITAR-TASS on Tuesday.
The Muslim community in Crimea is strong enough to withstand radical pseudo-Islamic religious trends and protect ordinary Muslims from their influence, Ravil Gainutdin, the head of the Russian Council of Muftis who has just returned from a trip to Crimea, said.
He said that Ukraine’s new political leadership had given green light to creation of various destructive opposition forces that were opposed to the Mufti

http://tass.ru/en/russia/726147

Ravil Gainutdin. Former head of Russia's Muftis.


Though Russia is not perfect I would urge people to be careful of "Russia is evil, US is great, long live Obama" propaganda.

The American regime is looking to set the Islamic world against Russia to weaken Russia.

The only winner of such a conflict would be the US itself.