Georgia, five other states, condemn deportation of Crimean Tatars 76 years ago

The foreign ministers of Georgia,  Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have released a joint statement to commemorate the deportation of Crimean Tatars from the peninsula on May 18, 1944. 

Agenda.ge, 18 May 2020 - 14:29, Tbilisi,Georgia

The foreign ministers of Georgia,  Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have commemorated and condemned the ‘criminal deportation’ of the Tatar people from Crimea by Soviet regime 76 years ago.

The joint statement reads that on the day in 1944, the Soviet regime deported Tatars from their historic homeland - Crimea - to distant regions of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation.

Just in the first years of exile almost half of all deported Crimean Tatars died. The period of the ban on return to the homeland - to Crimea -lasted until 1989 and was accompanied by purposeful linguistic and cultural assimilation,” said the statement. 

The statement says that the tragedy of the Crimean Tatar people repeated in 2014, ‘when Russia seized and illegally attempted to annex Crimea, which is an integral part of Ukraine.’