Crimea's Tatars are remembering their great national tragedy, the mass deportation by Stalin in May 1944 of more than two million men, women, and children. Liberated from the Nazis only to be freighted like cattle to central Asia, nearly half died. Today again under Russian occupation, they were not allowed to commemorate the anniversary in their homeland, or in their historic capital of Bahchesaray in Crimea, where gatherings were banned. Some Tatars defied the ban to pray there.
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A woman waves a Crimean Tatar flag as she attends a rally to mark 72 years since Crimean Tatar deportation from Crimea on the order of the Soviet authorities on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv on May 18.
