CCE 34.11 reported that in the autumn of 1974 about 150 Crimean Tatar families were living in the Crimea without residence permits — mostly in houses they had bought in the countryside.
From January to May 1975 the Crimean authorities gave residence permits to about 50 families (apparently on orders from the central government). Among these are families who returned to the Crimea a long time ago and have suffered various forms of persecution (for example, the Kashka family), and also families who arrived in 1975.
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In August and September new trials were held for “Violation of the residence regulations” (Article 196, UkSSR Criminal Code).
Bektash Mamutov, who returned to the Crimea in November 1974 and lived in the village of Lgotka, was sentenced to 3 years banishment from the Crimea.
Dzhantemir Seitmambetov, who had been living with his family of ten in the village of Zhuravki (since March 1975), was banished for 2 years.
Adzhire Osmanova, from the village of Bogatoye in Belogorsk district, was banished for 18 months (her brother was shot by the Germans in 1943, together with 43 other Crimean Tatar inhabitants of the village of Bodrak, for giving help to the partisans).
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The Crimean Tatars sentenced to banishment usually do not leave, but continue to struggle for their right to live in the Crimea and in their homes.
Mustafa Pashala, sentenced to 2 years banishment in August 1973, is living with his family in the village of Zolotoye Pole.
His son, Yaiya Pashala, who returned from army service in May 1975, sent a declaration in September to the USSR Supreme Soviet, in which he writes: ‘The Chairman of the District Soviet Executive Committee answered me: “If we give you a residence permit, we’ll have to give one to your father as well. Then we shall appear to have been unjust to your father”. And further on he writes:
“When I was serving in the Soviet Army, no one reproached me for being a Crimean Tatar, I was a citizen of the USSR; but since demobilization I have once again become a Crimean Tatar. For four months now I have not been registered on the army reserve list, nor have I been able to obtain a passport; this means that I am deprived of all civil rights …”
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Adzhimelik Mustafayeva, 58 years old, who had been living in Simferopol since February 1973 in a house bought ‘illegally’ without a residence permit, received a routine summons to the police station on 18 September.
Here she was arrested on a charge of violating residence regulations. On 26 September policemen broke into Mustafayeva’s house. There they found her brother, a sick man, who had come specially because of her arrest. They forcibly took him to the police station on a motorcycle, and there they demanded that he leave within three days. The arrested woman’s daughter, Afife Mustafayeva, who lives in Krasnodar, tried to obtain her mother’s release at the Simferopol procurator’s office and, at the end of September, she sent a complaint to the USSR Procurator-General and a letter to Chairman Mazurov of the Commission in Charge of Women’s Year in the USSR.
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Zore Binarifova, whose family lives in Novoalexeyevka, graduated from the training school of the City Market Gardening Organization in Simferopol, in the summer of 1974.
Not long before her graduation she and another student, also a Crimean Tatar, were informed by an official of the personnel department that they would not receive residence permits in Simferopol because of their nationality.
These girls were given their graduation certificates not at a special evening ceremony like everyone else, but separately. They were expelled from their hostel and dismissed from the shop where they had already started working, after being assigned there. Some of their fellow students came to their defence by writing a letter to the USSR Supreme Soviet, for which they were reprimanded by the same personnel department. Zore herself complained to various official bodies from October 1974 to June 1975, The city procurator answered her by saying she could appeal against her dismissal to a court. The court refused to accept the case on the grounds that the time limit for legal action on a labour dispute had expired. In addition, she was advised, in answer to her complaints, to obtain work in Novoalexeyevka, where she had a permanent residence permit.
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NOVOALEXEYEVKA (Ukraine)
A settlement in the Genichesk district of Kherson Region, bordering on the Crimea.
On the night of 18 May, the 31st anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars from the Crimea, a black flag of mourning was hoisted on a pole near the village soviet.
this incident is being investigated by KGB officials from Kherson and Genichesk. An investigation is also being carried out concerning the poster, hung up on 13 August 1974, protesting against the deportation of the Seitzhelilov-Yakubov family from the Crimea (CCE 34.11). At some interrogations (or ‘conversations’ — it seems a criminal investigation has not been formally initiated) people are being made to sign promises not to reveal the proceedings. P. P. Popov, the deputy head of the Kherson KGB administration, has interrogated schoolchildren about the flag of mourning.
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In February the Kherson Regional Party Committee called a meeting of Crimean Tatar communists in Novoalexeyevka. The secretary of the committee told the meeting that Novoalexeyevka was over-populated and asked that Crimean Tatars preparing to re-settle here from Uzbekistan (their former place of exile, Chronicle) should be told to settle in neighbouring districts.
The deputy chairman of the settlement soviet spoke at the meeting. In reply to a question from the secretary of the Party committee, she stated that there were about 500 Crimean Tatar families living in Novoalexeyevka.
It is known that houses are being built in Novoalexeyevka for settlers who have been invited from various regions.
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SEITMURATOVA
Aishe Seitmuratova, who has been demanding a re-examination of her case and her exculpation since her release from camp (CCE 34.11) is also asking to be re-instated as a graduate student at the Uzbek SSR Academy of Sciences History Institute (when she was arrested in 1971, she was three months short of completing her post-graduate course).
The director has refused to accept her application to the History Institute. On 18 April 1975 A. Seitmuratova appealed to the Science Department of the CPSU Central Committee. In her declaration she writes that when she applied for a post-graduate course, she was discriminated against because she was a Crimean Tatar.
Between 1964 and 1967 she passed her sentence examinations to the USSR Academy of Science History Institute in Moscow with high marks, but was only accepted the fourth time and then she was admitted to a different institute, the one in Tashkent.
A. Seitmuratova also provides a number of statistics concerning the level of culture and development among the Crimean Tatars, comparing their situation before the war with their situation today in Uzbekistan.
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Ebazer Khalilov (CCE31.9, ///CCE 32.9-2) was released on 6 December 1974 before his sentence had ended. His co-defendant Eskander Kurtumerov was released on 17 May 1975, on completion of his sentence. The third defendant in this case, Riyad Ramazanov, is due to be released in September.
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Ridvan Charukhov (‘rowdy assault’; CCE 31.7, ///CCE 32.9-2, CCE 34.11) has been transferred from a camp to ‘chemical construction’ (conditional early release involving assignment to a building-site under the surveillance of a commandant’s office); he has made some trips home to the Crimea on leave.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 