Editor’s Note: This article is a part of the “Journalism of Tolerance” project by the Kyiv Post and its affiliated non-profit organization, the Media Development Foundation. The project covers challenges faced by sexual, ethnic and other minorities in Ukraine, as well as people with physical disabilities and those living in poverty. This project is made possible by the support of the American people through the U. S. Agency for International Development and Internews. Content is independent of the donors.
Ilmi Umerov, a 60-year-old deputy head of the Crimean Tatar representative body the Mejlis, slowly walks along the hallway of the Mejlis office in the center of Kyiv on Nov. 6.
A leader of the Crimean Tatars, who has fought against first the Soviet Union and now the Russian dictatorship, Umerov looks tired. His hands are shaking slightly. He speaks slowly and every sentence he utters seems to take effort.
It’s been just 10 days since he and Akhtem Chiygoz, another deputy head of the Mejlis, were released from jail in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Umerov and Chiygoz were among the prominent Crimean Tatar politicians who opposed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The occupation authorities jailed them on sham charges of threating Russia’s territorial integrity and organizing illegal rallies.
It took the intervention of Turkey, a country with a large Crimean Tatar diaspora, to win the release Chiygoz and Umerov on Oct. 25. They were sent from Crimea to Turkey, but two days later both came to Kyiv, where the Mejlis is operating in exile – the body has been banned by the Russian occupation authorities in Crimea.
Since his release, Umerov has been very busy, giving interviews and preparing for foreign trips.
The day after his Nov. 6 interview with the Kyiv Post, Umerov flew to Paris, where he was awarded the Platform of European Memory and Conscience Prize for his struggle against totalitarianism.
After that, he will head for medical treatment in Germany at the invitation of German leader Angela Merkel: The activist suffers from type-2 diabetes, heart problems, and Parkinson’s disease.
But as soon as his treatment in Germany is over, Umerov wants to get back to work. He will participate in negotiations to free the 57 political prisoners, Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians, that the Kremlin still holds in Russia and Crimea.
“We will try all possible methods,” he says. “We’ll ask (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan for help again. We will push for their release through international organizations.”
He adds that he “will do everything possible to release Oleg Sentsov next,” referring to the Ukrainian film director, who is the most high-profile Ukrainian political prisoners held by Russia. Sentsov was arrested in 2014, subjected to a sham trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison for “plotting terrorist acts.” Sentsov is currently being held prisoner in Siberia.
But Umerov’s chief plan is to return to Crimea. He didn’t even know he was going to leave the peninsula until he was put on a plane to Turkey.
He says no condition was made that he should not return to Crimea.
“I wouldn’t recommend them (Chiygoz and Umerov) to come back to Crimea,” Sergey Aksenov, Kremlin-backed leader of occupation authorities in Crimea told ria.ru news website on Nov.2.
“Many people don’t want to see them back here. Personally I would go to protest on the border if they come. Let them live there (in Ukraine), Aksenov added.
But even if Umerov is allowed to return to the peninsula, his life there won’t be the same again.
Seized homeland
Until 2014, Umerov with his wife and three children lived in Bakhchisaray, an old Crimean city of 20,000 people, which is the center of the Crimean Tatar culture. It was mostly inhabited by Crimean Tatars until 1944, when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea to Central Asia.
The repressive act was collective punishment for the Crimean Tatars’ alleged collaboration with the Nazi occupiers of the peninsula in the Second World War. Some 190,000 people were deported to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan in just two days. It wasn’t until 1989 that they were allowed to return to Crimea again.
After the deportation of a large part of the Crimean population, many Russian families relocated to Crimea, and today the returned Crimean Tatars are a minority in their own homeland. Just 245,000 Crimean Tatars lived in Crimea at the time of the latest census in 2001, outnumbered by 1.5 million Russians and 576,000 Ukrainians.
It was the descendants of the relocated Russian population who decided the fate of today’s Crimea as a Russian-occupied territory, according to Umerov.
History repeats
After Russia started its occupation of Crimea, the Crimean Tatars once again began to be persecuted by the Kremlin.
Crimean Tatar activists were among the first Ukrainian citizens to openly protest against the Russian occupation. In response, dozens were arrested and others kidnapped. Human rights watchdogs have recorded at least 367 cases of human rights’ violations against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians who oppose the Kremlin’s occupation of Crimea.
Umerov, a prominent Crimean Tatar politician, was among those targeted by the occupation authorities.
He was arrested in May 2016 for “calling for separatism and violence” in an interview given in 2015 to a Ukrainian TV channel, where he said that sanctions against Russia should be intensified to make Russia withdraw from Crimea.
Umerov thinks he was being punished not for separatism, but simply for pointing out that Crimea is Ukrainian territory.
Traitors’ justice
A court in Crimea in September sentenced Umerov to two years in prison. Both the prosecutor and the judge are Ukrainian collaborators who work with the Russian occupation authorities under the Russian justice system. According to Umerov, some 90 percent of Crimean judges and prosecutors are collaborating with the occupying authorities.
When Umerov refused to undergo mental health checks, the court put him in a mental institution for a three-week-long examination.
“I spent more than 20 days locked in a ward, among mentally unstable people in horrible conditions. I would call that experience a long torture. They wanted to break me, but failed,” Umerov says.
During his final statement in court on Sept. 20, Umerov pleaded not guilty.
“In Crimea today, traitors are convicting patriots,” he told the court.
A month later, Umerov was released in a deal between the Turkish and Russian authorities, and put on a plane to Turkey.
Saved, yet not free
Umerov says that he knew Kremlin was going to release him, but didn’t know when and how it would happen.
“Two weeks before we (Umerov and Chiygoz) were taken from Crimea to Turkey, two FSB (Russian Federal Security Bureau) officers from Moscow came to my room and said there was an agreement to release us. But to be free, I needed to observe a formality – write a plea for mercy to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” Umerov says. “But I refused. They started persuading, threatening, so I had to ask them to leave.”
Umerov says he doesn’t know how the Turkish side persuaded Putin to release the Crimean Tatar prisoners.
“Putin has few allies left. And Erdogan is the one of that few, so Putin can’t afford to turn down the Turkish president’s request, I guess,” Umerov suggests.
Even in Kyiv, Umerov still doesn’t consider himself free, as he was taken from Crimea against his will.
“I can’t see myself living outside Crimea. So I’ll be back,” Umerov says.
No giving up
Lately, more and more voices in Europe have started to call for the world to recognize Russian’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
On Oct. 10, Czech President Milos Zeman said Ukraine should demand that Russia pay financial reparations, instead of trying to regain control of the territory.
But Umerov thinks that despite the fact that Crimea is de-facto Russia’s, and most of the population supports the occupation, Ukraine shouldn’t give up.
“You have to fight for your territory no matter what. You can’t just sell or give up part of your homeland,” Umerov says. “Ukraine has to forget about internal political conflicts in Kyiv and get rid of corruption and start fighting for what is really important.”
Umerov said that if Ukrainian government officially recognized Crimea as the Crimean Tatar Autonomous Republic, this new status would bring the fight for Crimea’s return to Ukraine to a new level.
However, the fight should not involve military action, but tougher sanctions, isolation of the Putin regime, and diplomatic pressure, Umerov said.
