Paul Goble
Staunton,
September 23 – Russian occupation officials have sent a letter to Crimean and
Sevastopol media outlets suggesting that they not mention the Mejlis of the
Crimean Tatar people because no such organization has received official
registration. It thus “doesn’t exist” and therefore should not be mentioned.
The
letter was signed by Natalya Poklonskaya, head of the occupation’s ministry of
internal policy, information and media, an official who has taken the lead in
Russia’s increasingly Orwellian treatment of this representative body of the
Crimean Tatar people on the Ukrainian peninsula (sevastopol.su/news.php?id=79816
and grani.ru/Politics/World/Europe/Ukraine/m.244463.html).
It
appears likely that the occupation authorities have issued this demand in
response to the Crimean Tatar-led blockade of Crimea that is depriving the
Russian-occupied area of food from the rest of Ukraine. In the past, 80 percent
of food for Crimea came from other parts of the country.
What
makes this action especially disturbing is that over the last year and a half,
Vladimir Putin has used Russian-occupied Crimea as a testing ground for steps
he subsequently has introduced in Russia. Banning references to things that exist
but that Moscow doesn’t like could thus spread.
And
both the current ban on references to the Crimean Tatar Mejlis and the
likelihood it will be extended highlight the need for Ukraine and other Western
countries to step up international broadcasting, including not only Internet
operations but direct-to-home television and shortwave radio, to both occupied
Crimea and Putin’s Russia.
Failure
to contest such actions not only by official diplomatic protests but by expanded
international broadcasting will give Putin and his minions an uncontested
victory they do not deserve and that neither Ukraine, Russia, or the world can
well afford.
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