SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik) — The claims by the former leaders of Mejlis regarding the alleged violations of the rights of Crimean Tatars in Crimea do not accord with reality, Russian president’s plenipotentiary in Crimea Oleg Belaventsev said.
After Crimea reunited with Russia, the former heads of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People – a representative body of Crimean Tatars — Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov have been denied access on the territory of the region for inciting inter-ethnic discord. Since then, Dzhemilev and Chubarov repeatedly stated that the rights of Crimean Tatars in Crimea are allegedly being violated.
The deputy head of the Crimean government Ruslan Balbec said that the Crimean Tatars are successfully integrating into Russian community.
“During all the years when Crimea was a part of Ukraine, the issue of Crimean Tatars served as an instrument of influence for the US State Department, and the Crimean Tatars were hostages of the fact that the Ukrainian authorities gave a monopoly right to represent the interest of all [Crimean] people to one person – Mustafa Dzhemilev,” Balbec said, adding that now the United States are trying to impose Dzhemilev’s view of the situation in Crimea to the whole world.
According to Balbec, since Crimea’ s reunification with Russia, Crimean Tatars for the first time in 23 years received real opportunities to develop their culture, religion and solve their social and economic problems.
Crimean Tatars are a Turckic ethnic group that formed in the Crimean Peninsula in the 13-17th centuries. In 1944, Stalin deported Crimean Tatars to Central Asia, but many of them have returned to the region in early 1990s. Currently some 260,000 Crimean Tatars live on the peninsula.
