Statement of the Congress of National Communities of Ukraine in Connection with the Court Ban Placed on the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People by Russian Occupants

On April 26, the Russian-controlled “Supreme Court of the Republic Crimea” confirmed the formal ban of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, which satisfied a claim made by the “Prosecutor General of the Republic of Crimea” Natalia Poklonskaya, who has been appointed to her post by the occupants. According to the decision of the court, Mejlis is now declared to be an “extremist organization.”

The decision of the court was obvious in advance. The activities of the Mejlis had already been stopped without even a court decision, merely at the order of the Crimean “Prosecutor's Office,” and the Russian Federation Ministry of Justice included the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People in the “list of civil and religious organizations whose activity has been suspended due to extremist activity.” The court hearings were a farce. It is enough to say that thanks to the “Prosecutor's Office” one of the pieces of evidence for the Mejlis's “extremist activity” was an article written by Mustafa Dzhemilev back in the Soviet Union.

The decision to brand Mejlis as an extremist organizations means that any activist of the Independent Crimean Tatar Movement who stayed in occupied territories can be persecuted. Unfortunately, this is not merely a theoretical possibility. It is now the third year of the occupation, and the repressions in the peninsula have only been increasing. Every day Crimea sees new searches and unjustified arrests, the court is preparing to pass judgment on the absurd “case of February 26,” and the “case of Hizb ut-Tahrir” is again gaining in scope.

The Congress of National Communities of Ukraine is deeply indignant that Mejlis has been banned and recognized as an extremist organization by a Crimean court. Leading Russian experts from the “Sova” center believe this decision to be unlawful even under Russian law.

We call for an immediate halt to the totalitarian repressions towards the activists of the Independent Crimean Tatar National Movement and the legalization of the Mejlis at the body representing the Crimean Tatars.

We call for the Ukrainian and global community, for democratic governments and international organizations to show their solidarity with the independent Crimean Tatar national movement that is currently being oppressed, and to put pressure on the Russian government and the Crimean proxies of the occupants. We remember how several decades ago the peaceful resistance of the Independent Crimean Tatar National Movement activists became one of the important factors which later led to the fall of the Soviet government.

We are certain that freedom and justice, national dignity and human rights will sooner or later prevail over tyranny and repressions.