In January 1972 Sarie Tokhlu with her husband and 11 children (the eldest is now serving in the army) came to the Crimea and bought a house in the village of Aromatnoye (Belogorsk district).
Village soviets and notaries offices do not register the purchase of houses by Crimean Tatars. The police, using threats of trials and prison, demand their departure. They are not given work.
The Tokhlu family (Sakharov Centre)
“On 9 October my husband Akhmet Tokhlu was convicted under Article 196 (Ukrainian Criminal Code) for evading registration; they also asked, hinting at parasitism, on what means we were living, as he had not worked for more than eight months. My husband was given two years of banishment beyond the boundaries of the Crimean Region. Up to that time we had lived on casual earnings from people, by collecting wild fruit and the left-overs from the harvest, and with the help of neighbours,”
writes the wife of A. Tokhlu.
The Tokhlu couple wrote dozens of applications to many official bodies, up to and including the Party Central Committee, seeking registration, work and the help provided by law to families with many children. S. Tokhlu has also not received the awards which are customarily given to mothers of many children.
She writes:
“I, my husband and our 11 children (nine of whom are minors) are all outside the law. Not one organ of authority in the USSR protects us.
“Complete tyranny is exercised over us on the part of the authorities, and there is no-one for us to complain to in the USSR. What will happen to our 11 children? A few families have been registered in the Crimea for show, as in a menagerie, but the rest are tormented like us. Thus, the only course remaining to us has been to turn for help to international organizations and to world public opinion. Protect our human rights: the right to live in our homeland, to have our language and culture, to have work and a crust of bread for our children.”
Sarie Tokhlu asks the UN Secretary General to send a commission to verify the facts of discrimination against Crimean Tatars, and also to urge the Red Cross and other organizations to send material aid for her children. A photograph of the family is attached to the statement.
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