Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 28 – The Russian
occupation authorities not only have imposed “systematic discrimination”
against the Crimean Tatar people but have conducted mass searches against them
and their institutions and organized or looked the other way in cases of
kidnaping and disappearances, according to Refat Chubarov, the head of the
Crimean Tatar Mejlis.
Russian officials like Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov say, Chubarov wrote in his blog today, that the Crimean
Tatars have all the rights other “citizens of the Russian Federation” have and
that he has “not heard about any serious problems.” But reports about such “problems”
are available to anyone who is willing to listen (echo.msk.ru/blog/chubarov_refat/1408454-echo/).
On Saturday evening local time, two
young Crimean Tatars were abducted by unknown assailants and have
disappeared. Their families and friends immediately
informed the force structures, the police and the FSB who said they would check
but apparently have done nothing of the kind, Chubarov said.
But given that “the FSB has
established total control over all society” and follows “practically every
resident of Crimea,” the Crimean Tatar leader said, it is impossible to believe
that the Russian occupiers couldn’t say who had committed this latest act of
force against the Crimean Tatars.
And yet another reason for skepticism about Russian
statements concerning the rights and protection of the Crimean Tatars, Chubarov
continued, is the protection the occupiers have been given to the illegal actions
of the self-proclaimed “detachments of ‘Crimean Self-Defense.’” As a result of this pattern, he said, Crimean
society is being subjected ever more to real terror.
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