In the Crimea a typewritten information bulletin has begun to come out. The second issue of the bulletin (the Chronicle does not possess the first issue) reports details of the persecution of Tatars between May and August 1974.
According to the bulletin, even occasions such as the 1st May holiday (May-Day in the village of Perevalnoye) or laying a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on 9 May (in the village of Kormovoye) attract the attention of the KGB, when Crimean Tatars are among those taking part. In the middle-school in the village of Kormovoye, the sports department’s wrestling section, consisting mainly of Crimean Tatars, has been closed down.
The bulletin reports the preventive measures taken by the Crimean authorities on the 30th anniversary of the deportation of the Tatars on 18 May 1944 (see ///CCE 32.9-2). On the night of 17-18 May, road blocks were set up on Crimean roads, and many population centres were surrounded by the police or druzhinniki. For several days prior to 18 May 1974 traffic policemen recorded the numbers of cars owned by Tatars. There were cases where Tatars were summoned for military training sessions (e.g. Eldar Shabanov) or detained by the police.
In connection with the anniversary, the bulletin reports the arrest, conviction and hunger-strikes of Mustafa Dzhemilev in Uzbekistan (CCE 32.9-1 and this issue).
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It reports that at the end of May, in Simferopol, 18 Crimean Tatars from different districts were given temporary jobs in the Crimea Spa Building Repair Trust and were promised they would be registered for permanent employment.
The bulletin explains this ‘farce’ by the proximity of the elections and by Nixon’s visit to the Crimea. In July all 18 persons were dismissed from their jobs on the false pretext that the work was completed. Baranovsky, the chairman of the Region’s Executive Committee, replied to their protests by telling them they would be tried and punished for coming to the Crimea without permission.
The bulletin states that, according to unofficial sources, the Crimea authorities have ordered higher education establishments and technical colleges to prevent the admission of Crimean Tatar students, and have ordered factories and collective farms not to employ Crimean Tatars in any leading positions.
Thus, in the village of Alekseyevka, a teacher at the Physical Culture School, Seidamet Yachlov, was dismissed; in the village of Kormovoye, the brigade-leader Veli Rasulov and the accountant Susanna Tippa lost their jobs.
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The bulletin publishes a list of 34 families living in the Crimea without residence permits.
The bulletin refers to the Crimean Action Group. The Chronicle has no information about the composition or activities of this group.
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APPEAL
to K. Waldheim, UN Secretary-General, and the UN Human Rights Commission
(October 1974, 3 pages)
The return of Crimean Tatars to their homeland, begun in 1967, cannot be stopped by any punitive measures: trials, prisons or exile. And this year, 1974, hundreds of people have managed to return from exile to the Crimea, knowing quite well what awaits them in their homeland.
The following persons have been sentenced to banishment from the Crimea for different periods of time:
Ibraim Akhchiloy (the father of three children), from the village of Aivazovka (Sheikhmamai*) — for five years.
[*Here, and below, the pre-1944 Tatar names of the villages are given in brackets after the Russian names.]
Mustafa Pashala (five children), from the village of Zolotoye Pole (Dzheilaz) — for two years.
Ismail Akhtemov (four children), from the village of Dolinnoye (Ak-chora) — for two years.
Asan Budzhek (five children), from the village of Lgovka (Chelebi-eli) — for one year.
Seiyar Kanar (seven children), from the village of Pushkino (Eseneki) — for five years.
Kerime Ibraimova (two children) from the village of Vostochnoye (Uch-kuyu) — for five years.
Sulbie Mazinova (four children), from the village of Chernopole (Kara-chel) — for two years (she has been living without a residence permit since 1971).
Enver Dzhemiley (three children), from the village of Zemlyanichnoye (Ortalan) — for two years.
The trial was set for 4 Novemberfor Seitkhalil Abdzhelilov, who was living with his wife and five children in the village of Zhuravka (Seit-eli). The police had already tried to deport them, breaking the windows and doors of their house, but finding the owners were not at home.
The Kashka family came to the Crimea in 1969 and settled in the village of Kizilovka (Dzhimrik). Twice they were expelled from the Crimea, their property was stolen and their house confiscated without compensation. In January 1974 they again bought a house in another village, Novoklenovka (Uch-koz). They are being threatened with a third expulsion. (See the ‘Appeal of Bedzhiye Kashka’ and her son Amet’s letter to Komsomolskaya Pravda in the Archive of the Chronicle, number 2.) The appeal reports about forcible deportations and judicial persecution.
According to facts given in the appeal, not less than 200 families are now living in the Crimea without residence permits; there are 65 such families in the Lenin (Kyzylkuyu) district alone.
The appeal ends with these words:
“We, the one percent of the Crimean Tatars who have been able to return to our homeland, appeal to the United Nations . . . asking them to set up a commission to investigate on the spot the situation of our people, to help us to obtain an end to the discrimination against our people, and to re-establish our rights as a nation and as human beings in our homeland.
“In order to avoid further arrests and persecution, this Appeal is sent to you without signatures, but with the approval of all Crimean Tatars living in the Crimea.”
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An anonymous article entitled ‘The Little Dictator’ tells how Gavrilov, a deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet and Director of the ‘Slavny’ state farm, zealously persecutes the Crimean Tatar farm workers. Because of this, of the 23 families which came to the village of Kotovskoye under a work-recruitment scheme in 1968-9, there are now only 12 families left.
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TWO UNSUCCESSFUL DEPORTATIONS
The Seitzhelilov-Yakubov family was forcibly deported from the Crimea, but on the following day it was brought back. The details of this incident are known from Information bulletin 2 and other reports.
Seventy-year-old Zebide Seitzhelilov, her son Sabri, her daughter Sidikha and elder daughter Shevkie Yakubova, a widow with seven children, bought a house in the village of Rovnoye in the spring of this year. Like many other Crimean Tatars, they were refused residence permits and employment, although Sabri is a qualified taxi driver, a skill ‘in high demand’. On 15 June the Pervomaisky district court decided that their purchase of the house was illegal and that they should be deported.
On 12 August the following persons turned up to carry out the order: the procurator; the judge; Tikhovsky, the head of the local police; the Party organiser of the Noskhod’ collective farm; Kozlov, the chairman of the village soviet; the head of a soviet department, Novikov; 16 policemen; and 12 students from the Sevastopol Instrument-making Institute.
The executors of the action paid no attention to Yakubova’s request for a postponement until she had time to visit the Regional Party committee; the head of police tore from her hand a document issued by the village soviet recording the purchase of the house for 3,300 roubles, and neighbours who stood up for the family were driven away. Then the adults and children were forced into a lorry; their arms were twisted behind their backs; Yakubova was struck on the legs; the 12-year- old Aibek, who ran away four times, was caught and brought back; Z. Seitzhelilova was carried and put into a car in a state of unconsciousness.
Towards evening, these people and their household effects were driven to the village of Novo-Alekseyevka, which is in Kherson Region, near the Crimea, and deposited in the square near the station. In the morning over 100 villagers (about 2,000 Crimean Tatars live in Novo-Alekseyeva) did not go to work; they gathered round the deported family and expressed their indignation. Soon some officials of the Genichesk District Administration of Internal Affairs arrived on the scene. and the major in charge wrote down Sabri’s account of the circum- stances of the deportation and promised to telephone to the city of Kherson and settle matters. S. Seitzhelilov sent a telegram to Brezhnev, Shcherbitsky and the first secretary of the Regional Party committee, asking that his family be returned to their home at once.
At 4.00 p.m., a notice was put up in the square:
“Put an end to anti-Communist actions and stop driving people out of their homeland. Stop the persecution of the Crimean Tatars.”
The police asked for this notice to be removed, but the local inhabitants agreed to do this only when the people who had been deported were returned to their home in the company of their representatives.
At 7.00 p.m. a lorry was provided, the Crimean Tatars took down the notice and their representatives accompanied the Seitzhelilovs back to the Crimea.
Although they were taken to a different village, Otkrytoye, 20 kilometres from their house, they were promised a residence permit and jobs.
In Novo-Alekseyevka photographs were taken of the Seitzhelilov ‘camp’ and the notice; these were given to western journalists in Moscow, together with a short report of the events.
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A ‘Protest’ has been circulating, in the name of the Crimean Tatars living in the Crimea, against the actions of the authorities in the village of Batalnoye in Lenin district.
“On 16 September the Party organizer Ganus, the chairman of the village soviet D. Rugin, and the director of the state farm arranged for the unlawful expulsion of the Ibragimov family (seven people) from their home. In the morning a lorry drove up, the door was broken down and windows were smashed. Party organizer Ganus himself dragged sleepy children outside in their nightclothes, throwing them into the lorry like puppies, while policemen and other officials were dealing with the parents.
“Hearing the noise, the villagers assembled, took all the luggage out of the lorry and removed the children; they did not allow the Ibragimov family to be taken away. The officials called for reinforcements. Policemen, traffic- police, officials of the Theft of Public Property Department, the Criminal Investigation Department and the fire-brigade arrived from district head- quarters . . . They began to drive people out of the house and the garden.
“Major Odintsov especially distinguished himself during this operation, as did the Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, who twisted the arms of women and men alike, without regard for age. Odintsov shouted that he would take revenge on them for his father who he said had been killed by Crimean Tatars: when this was checked, it turned out that his father had died in his eighties in 1973.
“To make the official actions look justified two of our comrades, Izzet Khalilov and Server Zeidullayev, were tried for allegedly resisting the authorities and given 15 days in prison each.”
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On 20 September, in the village of Novozhilovka (in the Crimea), Shevket Useinov’s house was demolished by a bulldozer.
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TRIALS OF TWO FAMILIES WHICH RETURNED TO CRIMEA ON THEIR OWN INITIATIVE
“Osmanov has been found guilty and sentenced by the people’s court for having returned on his own initiative to the Crimea in September 1973, together with his wife and daughter, and for having settled without a residence permit in the home of citizen Yumatova in the village of Mazanka.” (From the decision taken by the Crimea Regional Court on 16 June 1974 at the appeal hearing of Osmanov.)
At the same time that Dilyaver Osmanov and his wife Vilyara Shchetkina bought a house in the village of Mazanka, the brothers Dzhefer and Shevki Abdurashitov also bought a house there. The local authorities tried to prevent the sale of the houses and the families settling there. (V. Shchetkina later stated in a complaint to Minister Shchelokov that a guard was put on their house at this time.) This succeeded to some extent: Sh. Abdurashitov had his house registration book taken away by Shkvorets, the chairman of the village soviet, and his garden allotment was given to a neighbour by the collective farm authorities; in the end, Sh. Abdurashitov and his family of five persons had to go and stay in his brother’s house. The two other families have been subjected to a series of trials lasting for about a year and perhaps still not over.
In September and October 1973 they were fined on two occasions; in January, a Simferopol district court, on the initiative of the procurator, declared the purchase of the houses to be invalid and, finally, D. Osmanov, V. Shchetkina, D. Abdurashitov and his wife Gulnar Alieva were charged with malicious violation of the residence regulations (Article 196, UkSSR Criminal Code). On 27 May a court presided over by Judge Mironova, who had earlier tried cases concerning the expulsion of Crimean Tatars (CCE 31), sentenced the women to one year in prison each, and their husbands to one-and-a-half years each, all the sentences being suspended on condition that they be obliged to work on building sites under the administration of the M V D. The appeal court upheld the verdicts.
In August D. Osmanov and D. Abdurashitov were sent to do compulsory labour in Dzhankoi, but the authorities there would not accept them. In October they were sent to a new destination — Orenburg Region, and registered for special surveillance.
On 24 September both of the convicted persons sent identical complaints to the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR, in which they asked that the verdicts against them be reviewed and declared null and void. The complaints state that the actions of the authorities in their case were illegal and biased, beginning with the official refusal to allow the purchase of the houses to be legally registered. The complaints quote a statement made by Shkvorets, the chairman of the village soviet, that he ‘will not allow the sale of houses to Crimean Tatars’.
Osmanov and Abdurashitov write that in returning to the Crimea they based their action on the legal exculpation of the Crimean Tatars. In addition to the relevant decrees, they quote from the reply of 31 March 1973 sent by the Pravda columnist Yu. Zhukov to G. R. Dzhemilev, a war invalid: ‘At present, as far as I know, Crimean Tatars are allowed to choose their places of residence according to their wishes; no restrictions are imposed.’
Osmanov, the brothers Abdurashitov and their wives have complained many times to various authorities.
This is a reply received from a deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet:
“Dear Vilyara Asanovna, I have received your letter. I sympathize greatly with you, but you are wrong to attribute your unsuccessful attempt at resettlement to your nationality.
“Hundreds of citizens of various nationalities write to me complaining of their lack of success in trying to settle in the Crimea and obtain residence permits there. People from all over the country want to settle in the Crimea on account of their health, and our Region is not capable of absorbing all would-be settlers. This explains the refusal to allow you to resettle here.
23 January 1974.
“With respect, Zhuravlev”
The authorities ignore circumstances such as the illness of V. Shchetkina, who was advised by a medical board in the town of Andizhan to live in the Crimea. They also ignore the fact that G. Alieva’s father, a communist, was executed by the Germans (the order to expel them from the purchased house even included in its list of names this man’s widow, 75-year-old Makhube Alieva), and the facts that Shevki Abdurashitov is a war veteran, and that his son is now serving in the army.
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ENVER AMETOV
On 14 June 1974 Enver Ametov sent a statement to Podgorny. In this statement he enumerated the persecutions he had been subjected to since 1967 because of his attempts to return to the Crimea and his participation in the national movement (in particular, for taking part in the demonstration in Moscow, on Mayakovsky Square, on 6 June 1969, CCE 8.5). The immediate reason for his appeal to Podgorny was the deception and threats of military officer Komelin and KGB official Popov (///CCE 32.9-2). In concluding his statement, Ametov writes:
“. . . What connection can the K G B have with the nationality problem? Is the nationality problem in the USSR an especially dangerous crime? It turns out that the Decree of 5 September 1967 [rehabilitating the Crimean Tatars] has remained merely a piece of paper and has not rehabilitated any- one. I remain a second-class citizen in terms of my political rights. Even if I have always known that I am denied my political rights, I have now, it seems, also lost the right to work.
At present, I must strive not only to obtain residence in the Crimea, but also to assert my right to work in the place where I am allowed to work.
I have been subjected to all these humiliations because I expressed the desire to live in the Crimea, my national homeland. and because of my nationality.
Am I guilty of some crime for being born a Crimean Tatar and belonging to a small nation? I could hardly have picked other parents for myself or chosen a nationality more acceptable to the authorities.
Taking all this into consideration, I make the following statements: I refuse to do military service. I will not obey any call-up by a military board in peacetime until I am allowed to make use of the rights guaranteed to me in Lenin’s Decree of 18 October 1921. 1 refuse to obey any summons by the KGB, either to appear as a witness or for an interrogation, in any matter relating to the nationality problem.
I am ready to appear before any Soviet court, if the expression of a wish to live in one’s national homeland .. . is an especially dangerous crime or a violation of public order.
This statement was sent to the UkSSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, which told E. Ametov that his ‘statement on the question of a residence permit’ would be examined by the Kherson Region department of Internal Affairs (MVD).
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As the text of E. Ametov’s statement shows, CCE 31.9 was wrong in reporting that items were confiscated during the search at his house on 28 June 1973, in connection with the case of Kurtumerov. During the search nothing was confiscated.
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In April 1974 the Zaporozhe Regional court sentenced Kubus Islyamov to six years of strict-regime camps, under Article 62 (UkSSR Criminal Code = Article 70, RSFSR Code).
K. Islyamov is over 70 years old; he was born in the Crimea, in the village of Kokkoz; recently he had been living with his family in the village of Konstantinovka in the Melitopol district. Islyamov’s family were not informed of the place or time of his trial, and none of his relations or friends could be present at the trial.
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CAMPS
Dzhemil Kurtseitov, sentenced to seven years in January 1974 for ‘hooligan assault’ (CCE 31.7 & ///CCE 32.9-2) is now in this labour camp: Zhitomir, institution YaYu-309-4. In September or October, he sent a protest to the Supreme Court of the USSR, the full text of which is published in the Archive of the Chronicle, No. 2.
His protest tells the story of harassment to which his family was subjected, demonstrates the provocative nature of the sheep-stealing episode for which he was tried, and enumerates the procedural violations committed in his case. D. Kurtseitov demands that he be released.
Earlier, an appeal court had reduced Kurtseitov’s sentence from seven years to four-and-a-half years and the sentences of his co-defendants R. Charukhov and E. Mustafayev from five years to three-and-a-half (?) years.
E. Mustafayev’s address is: Voroshilovgrad Region, Vakhrushevo, UL- 314/19-1.
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Reshat Dzhemilev, now in a camp in central Siberia (Krasnoyarsk Region; CCEs 31, 32), is ill with a stomach ulcer and requires an operation. His relatives asked for him to be transferred to a hospital in Uzbekistan, but this was refused.
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Mustafa Dzhemilev has been transferred to another camp: Omsk — 644062, uchr. 16/3 — E. He has called off his hunger strike, which lasted for more than a month (CCE 32.9-1).
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RELEASE OF SEITMURATOVA
Aishe Seitmuratova was released on 15 June from camp 2 in the Mordovian complex; she had served a three-year sentence, which was imposed in Tashkent in July 1971 (CCE 23.7 [1]).
This was her second conviction for participation in the Crimean Tatar movement. On the first occasion, in Moscow in May 1967, she was sentenced conditionally to three years’ imprisonment, after being kept under arrest for seven months. Prior to her second arrest she was a graduate student at the Institute of History of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences in Tashkent.
A. Seitmuratova was shunted around for two months on the way to her camp: from Tashkent by way of Kuibyshev, Ryazan, Vyazma, Smolensk, Minsk, Smolensk, Vyazma, Ryazan, Potma, camp 2 in institution ZhKh-385 (here she was put in a punishment cell for three days — not as a punishment, but because she was designated as still en route to her destination); then to camp 3 in institution ZhKh-385 (three days), and then back to camp 2. In this camp she repeatedly demanded to be accorded the status of a political prisoner and transferred from camp 2, where 1,200-1,500 criminal women prisoners are held, to camp 3.
Soon after A. Seitmuratova returned to her mother’s house in Samarkand, they were visited by a police inspector; when he was asked by Aishe to give the reason for his visit, he gave her an official letter from the city department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Head of the police station, ordering that Aishe be kept under ‘preventive’ surveillance for six months and that monthly routine reports be submitted on her.
At the end of November Seitmuratova sent to the Procurator-General a statement in which she demanded that her sentence be retrospectively quashed.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 