Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 13 – In yet another
throwback to Soviet days designed to distract attention from what it is doing
to other groups, Moscow has announced that it has taken under its protection
two small nations in occupied Crimea, the 850 Karaims and 350 Krymchaks, even
as it continues its campaign against ethnic Ukrainians and especially the
Crimean Tatars.
Today, the Russian government
announced that it plans to include the Karaims and Krymchaks, two small ethnic
communities in Crimea, in its list of numerically-small indigenous peoples of
the Russian Federation, bringing the number of those with that official status
to 49 (regulation.gov.ru/project/17036.html?point=view_project&stage=1&stage_id=6158).
This category of peoples,
Nazaccent.ru notes, includes peoples numbering fewer than 50,000 who live on
the territory of their ancestors and lived there before the appearance of a
state, preserve their own social institutions and customary law, have their own
language … and consider themselves distinct” and enjoy certain special rights
under Russian law (nazaccent.ru/content/12745-karaimov-i-krymchakov-vnesut-v-perechen.html).
One can only welcome any protections extended to ethnic
group, especially those who have suffered so much: the Karaims, Jewish but not
Semitic and thus able to escape the worst of the Nazi depradations, nonetheless
suffered horribly in the 20th century; while the Krymchaks, also
Jewish, were targeted for extermination by the Nazis and the quarter who
survived the Holocaust were then deported by the Soviets after 1945 (eki.ee/books/redbook/karaims.shtml).
But any credit
extended to the Russian occupation authorities for these steps must not become
the occasion for ignoring or downplaying continuing or even growing Russian
oppression of the 300,000 Crimean Tatars and the 500,000 ethnic Ukrainians who
live on the peninsula.
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