Halya Coynash
Russia has
formally begun the procedure of banning the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People
citing as formal grounds the law on countering ‘extremism’, while claiming, in
Soviet style, that this is because of requests from Crimean Tatar
organizations.
The Mejlis
represents the vast majority of Crimean Tatars and has been adamantly opposed
to Russia’s occupation of Crimea since the invasion in Feb 2014. While
the Mejlis has remained firmly committed to peaceful protest, Russia and the
regime it installed in Crimea have waged a major offensive against it,
involving the exile or imprisonment of its leaders and other forms of
repression. There have been persistent attempts to deny and to undermine
its authority.
The denials
are in marked contrast both to the recognition given the Mejlis both in Ukraine
and internationally. Ukraine’s parliament recognized the Mejlis as the
main representative body of the Crimean Tatar people on March 20, 2014.
This was reiterated by the European Parliament in its Feb 4, 2016 Resolution.
This document specifically condemns the actions of the de facto authorities in
Crimea by hindering the functioning of the Mejlis, closing its headquarters and
through other acts of intimidation (item 11).
The Mejlis is
an integral part of Crimean Tatar life and self-government, and an official ban
will not prevent this. As Euromaidan SOS points out, it will however make
it impossible to use the Mejlis symbol which is basically the Crimean Tatar
flag. The ban will also carry with it criminal liability for supporting and /
or financing the Mejlis, a ban on circulating its materials and likely
prosecution of members and supporters.
Nariman
Dzhelyal, the First Deputy Head of the Mejlis, was handed a copy of the
application for a ban to the Crimean Supreme Court on Monday afternoon.
The document read out by de facto prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya is an echo
from the worst Soviet traditions. It states, for example, that “there
continue to be appeals from the Crimean Tatar population, including from the
heads of Crimean Tatar organizations, asking for the activities of the Crimean
Tatar Mejlis to be declared unlawful and provocation, and to also take measures
to ban the use of the Crimean Tatar national flag by criminals running the
blockade and sabotage against the peoples of Crimea”.
One such
document was presented to Dzhelyal when he was summoned for questioning on Feb
11, the first day of a mass wave of armed searches and arrests of Crimean Tatar
homes.
These alleged
‘voices of the people’ are especially unconvincing given the long background to
Russia’s offensive against the Mejlis. This became extremely fierce as
the Blockade began to bite and to show up the degree to which Crimea is
dependent on mainland Ukraine. It had, however, begun within months of
Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and escalated seriously after the Mejlis called
on Crimean Tatars to boycott pseudo elections in September 2014. It was
just days after these elections that an 11-hour armed search was carried out of
the Mejlis building in Simferopol. Nothing even remotely illegal was
found and the next day, a different pretext was used to evict the Mejlis.
The notorious
26 February 2014 case, the detentions, as well as armed searches and
interrogations, are widely understood to be an attack against Crimean Tatars in
general, but against Chiygoz and the Mejlis in particular.
Back in
October 2015, Russia’s Civic Chamber publicly asked the Prosecutor General to
investigate the Mejlis for possible ‘extremism’. The letter to
Russia’s Prosecutor General Yury Chaika was signed by Maxim Grigoryev, chair of
the ‘Commission on harmonization of inter-ethnic and inter-faith
relations’. He also claimed that “during meetings with residents of
Crimea, we were on several occasions passed complaints about the Mejlis’
extremist activities.”
This followed a similar, but more vague, threat made
a month earlier and ‘advice’ issued by
Poklonskaya to the Crimean media not to mention the Mejlis at all.
Grigoryev’s
account of the Blockade, and allegations about Crimean Tatar leaders, are
highly questionable, as indeed are the arguments presented in the ban
application.
Poklonskaya is
reported by TASS to have, in all seriousness, told Nariman Dzhelyal on Monday
that she was handing a copy of the ban application to him because “the Head of
the Mejlis Refat Chubarov is hiding from the investigative bodies and is at
present on the wanted list for crimes which he has been charged with”.
Refat Chubarov
was banned from his homeland in early July 2014, 2
months after a similar ban was imposed on veteran Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa
Dzhemiliev. However, in October 2015, a month after the two men initiated
the Crimea Blockade, Russia issued an arrest warrant against Chubarov. He
is accused (this is not a joke) of “encroaching on Russia’s territorial
integrity” by insisting that Crimea is Ukraine.
Two months
later, an arrest warrant was issued against 72-year-old Mustafa Dzhemiliev.
He is accused of having, on May 3, 2014, the day after the ban against
him was first imposed, tried to cross into his own homeland which Russia, in
violation of Ukrainian and international law had invaded and annexed a few
months earlier.
Poklonskaya
also preferred not to explain that she could not hand the document to the
Deputy Head of the Mejlis, Akhtem Chiygoz, who has been held in detention since
Jan 29, 2015, on trumped-up charges pertaining to a pre-annexation
demonstration over which Russia has no jurisdiction.
The document
claims that the ban is called for on the basis of Article 9 of Russia’s law on
countering what it calls extremism. The specific article concerns
liability of organizations for carrying out extremist activities.
The
application begins by citing article 13 of Russia’s Constitution, which states
that “The creation and activities of public associations whose aims and actions
are aimed at a violent change of the fundamental principles of the
constitutional system and at violating the integrity of the Russian Federation,
at undermining its security, at setting up armed units, and at instigating
social, racial, national and religious strife shall be prohibited.”
It is then
noted that “one of the main aims of the Mejlis is the reinstatement of the national
and political rights of the Crimean Tatar People and implementation of their
right to free national-state self-determination on their national
territory.” It seeks to achieve this, and here’s the rub, as part of
Ukraine.
This is where
the Mejlis’ purported ‘extremism’ lies.
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