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Ticked Off Tatars

Former Deportees Want Their Crimean Land Back

They were deported in 1944. They began returning in the early 1990s. And now, they are tired of waiting around. The Tatars in Crimea want their land back now.

It wasn’t a huge demonstration. Just a few hundred people took to the streets in the city of Simferopol on Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula on Monday. A couple of streets barricaded. Traffic interrupted. That was it.

The issue, though, is divisive, and one with deep roots. The some 500 protesters were Crimean Tatars, a group who have for years been trying to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. Having returned from exile since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Tatars have resorted to illegal land grabs in recent months.

This week is to be one of "signal acts" -- minor disruptions to draw attention to the Tatars grievances. A larger protest originally scheduled for this week has been delayed until the end of February.

Of specific concern for the Tatars is housing. When they began returning in the early 1990s, they found Russians and others living on lands they considered to be theirs.

The Tatars are calling for the creation of housing complexes -- an investment of at least $500 million -- Server Saliyev, chairman of the Crimean Committee for the Affairs of Nationalities and Deported Citizens, told the Itar-Tass news agency.

But many have decided to take matters into their own hands. As of the end of 2006, some 15,000 Tatars had illegally seized some 5,300 properties on the Crimean Peninsula -- some 1,300 hectares (3,212 acres) were seized last year alone, according to Itar-Tass. Just last month, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law making such land-squatting a criminal act.

The problem, though, isn't likely to go away. The dispute stems back to 1944, when Stalin deported all Tatars to Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia after he learned that some Tatar officials had collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation. Tens of thousands died as a result of the deportations.

Some 250,000 have since returned to Ukraine, where they have been greeted by poverty, discrimination, and government foot-dragging. Many survive on state welfare and on donations from Tatars living in the US, Canada, and Turkey. Grants from groups like George Soros' Renaissance Foundation foster cultural programs, while a radio station opened in 2005 has helped the community organize.

Russians "displaced" by the returning Tatars are indignant to say the least. They assert that they were given the land by their government 60 years ago. For them, the Tatars' return nothing is short of disastrous, despite the relatively peaceful strategies the Tatars are using to pressure the government into action.

One woman told the BBC in 2004, "We've been living here for a long time, it was peaceful until they returned, now bad things have started to happen, everybody is afraid."

mps/itar-tass