[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 9, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H7303]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              THE ENDURING STRUGGLE OF THE CRIMEAN TATARS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Royce) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk a little bit about the 
enduring struggle of the Crimean Tatars, a people who have suffered 
much over the many generations of war that they have seen in their 
region. I had an opportunity to meet with many of them when I was in 
Ukraine. Eliot Engel and I sat down with all of the different minority 
groups that have been through so much in that region.
  I just wanted to say this to the Members of the House, and that is 
that Russia's aggression in Ukraine has produced many tragedies, but 
none--none--more so than that of the Crimean Tatars. For centuries, 
this Muslim community has suffered greatly at the hands of Russia's 
rulers. Russia's rulers have devastated the population, and they have 
driven countless numbers from their homes. And now, Moscow's forcible 
occupation of Crimea has imposed a new oppression on this long-
suffering community, forcing large numbers to flee and making the rest 
increasingly unwelcome in their ancestral homeland.
  When I was in Ukraine, besides meeting with senior Ukrainian 
officials, we had these conversations with the representatives of their 
community as well as other minority groups, other ethnic Russian 
communities. And I was privileged to meet and talk at length with the 
most prominent Tatar leader, Mustafa Dzhemilev, who is the former head 
of the Mejlis, the executive body of the Tatar parliament, as well as 
with other senior leaders in their community. He and his colleagues 
have been blocked from returning to Crimea by the ruling authorities 
there, as so many other Tatars have been blocked once they go over the 
border from Crimea to come back into their home. They are refugees 
unable to go home.
  During our meeting, we discussed the increasing pressure on the 
Tatars in Crimea and the situation they live under. Thousands have 
fled, and those who remain face a very uncertain future. They are 
subject to increasing pressure and restrictions by the local 
authorities, who they believe are trying to force them out because of 
their ethnicity and because they didn't welcome Russia's armed 
occupation and illegal annexation. Of course, there was never any 
possibility that they would be allowed to participate in the phony 
referendum held in March in which 97 percent of the population 
supposedly voted one way in that election to join Russia, even though 
the entire ethnic Russian population numbers only 58 percent of that 
overall community. The Tatar population is about 12 percent. Knowing 
that the vote would be rigged, they refused to provide the propaganda 
exercise with any credibility, and they and many other ethnic groups 
there in Crimea urged a boycott and undertook that boycott.
  Unfortunately, their current struggle is only the latest chapter in 
their long history of great suffering and very brave perseverance. Many 
times in the past, they have been subjected to mass deportation and 
assaults, with great loss of life. The most terrible was Stalin's mass 
deportation of the Muslim Tatar population to Central Asia in 1944. 
Over half--over half--of the men, women, and children died in what only 
can be called a genocidal process. And those that survived the 
privations found themselves in an alien world, forced to begin their 
lives again in great hardship.
  In the mid-1980s, the Tatars were finally allowed to return to 
Crimea. Most of the surviving population--and it was a fraction of the 
original population--eventually did come back. In the last census, they 
comprised 12 percent of the population. There they reestablished their 
ancient community and proudly took their place in Ukraine's new 
democracy.
  All of the people I spoke with in Ukraine, including the ethnic 
Russians whose interests Moscow claims it is protecting, said that they 
opposed Russian intervention, and at the end of the day they supported 
a united Ukraine. And that was especially true of every ethnic 
community and civil society group in eastern Ukraine that we talked 
with. And the Tatars, including some still alive who survived Stalin's 
crimes, have a deep historical memory of Russia's actions in Crimea. 
They are not fooled by Moscow's protestations of peace there.
  In our efforts to secure a lasting peace in Ukraine, the U.S. and our 
allies must not accept Russia's forcible expulsion of Tatars from 
Crimea, but that is, once again, what the Russian Government is doing 
to these people. They must recognize the religious and ethnic rights 
there. And we must not forget the people there. We must not leave them 
to this fate at the hands of merciless authorities who seek a region 
cleansed of all those they deem to be enemies of their imperial 
ambitions.
  By refusing to surrender to endless threats and centuries of 
oppression, the Tatar people continue to give hope to all those around 
the world who are battling overwhelming forces in defense of their 
homes and of their freedom.

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