Thread by @ukraine_world

Crimean Tatar resistance: a historical thirst for freedom. UkraineWorld spoke to Alim Aliyev, Deputy General Director at the Ukrainian Institute. Key points – in our brief, #UkraineWorldAnalysis 1/14

The last 9 years of Russia’s war against Ukraine have been characterized by the taking of political prisoners. In the territories it occupied, Russia threw people with pro-Ukrainian positions behind bars and continues to do so in the newly occupied territories. 2/14

Some Crimean political prisoners are in the pre-trial detention center in Simferopol, while others have been deported to different parts of 🇷🇺. In addition to the problem of prisoners’ access to their lawyers, political prisoners also lack access to medical care. 3/14

Over the past year, 247 cases were opened by the Russian occupiers against residents of Crimea under the so-called law on “discrimination against the Russian Armed Forces”. 4/14

Bohdan Ziza, an artist who painted the doors of the occupation administration in Yevpatoria with yellow and blue paint, was kidnapped and tortured, and is now accused of treason. 5/14

Russia is again colonizing the Crimean peninsula, a process with several dimensions. The Russo-Ukrainian war is anti-colonial and existential. The non-recognition of 🇺🇦 as a separate nation is a consistent and prominent thread in the speeches of Russian propagandists. 6/14

The first dimension of colonization is identity. Russia has banned the Mejlis, the main political body of the Crimean Tatars. In 2021, the leaders of the Mejlis were either arrested or exiled. 7/14

The first deputy of the Mejlis, Nariman Dzhelialov, was also imprisoned for 17 years his participation in the Crimean Platform summit on returing Crimea to Ukraine. After the 🇷🇺 occupation of Crimea, only 3% of children can learn the Crimean Tatar language. 8/14

There is also a so-called covert mobilization, which is a war crime. According to international law, an occupying country cannot conscript people from occupied territories into the army. 9/14

Over the past six months, about 20,000 Crimean Tatars have left Crimea to avoid being mobilized by the Russian Armed Forces, as the Russians planned to force Crimean Tatars in Ukraine and those still living on the peninsula to fight against each other. 10/14

Russia has promoted settler colonization: over the past 9 years, approximately 70,000 people have left Crimea, while Russia has brought about 700,000 Russians to the peninsula. 11/14

🇷🇺 tries for a 3rd time to transform Crimea’s demographics: before the 1st annexation of Crimea in the 18th century, 95% of the population were Crimean Tatars, this share has now decreased to 13%. The deportation of 1944 and today’s efforts are processes of 🇷🇺 colonization.12/14

But people in Crimea are carrying out underground educational, cultural, human rights, and media initiatives in order to preserve their identities and free thinking. After the occupation, for example, the Crimean Solidarity initiative was founded. 13/14

Russia has created fake organizations that aim to replace Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar ones. They began to publish a Ukrainian-language newspaper and created an organization of Crimean Tatars, which was joined by collaborators. 14/14