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t has become fashionable of late in swathes of the Western mass media to write about the so-called oppressions of the Crimean Tatars, the people living on the Crimean peninsula in the Crimean federal district of the Russian Federation.

It is interesting that a few articles on this issue have appeared in the Indonesian press as well.

 In particular, they mention the alleged closing of cultural organizations of this ethnic minority, harassment on the part of the Russian authorities and other, clearly invented forms of oppression.

On March 16, 2014, a referendum on reunification with the Russian Federation took place in the Crimea. The referendum conformed fully to democratic procedures and international legal norms. More than 96 percent of voters supported reunification with their historical motherland — Russia.

Immediately afterward, the Russian government began the implementation of a large-scale policy directed at the social and economic recovery of the Crimea.

Effective measures for providing economic assistance to this region, recovering its infrastructure and strengthening the rule of law have been developed. Such policy includes also full support for the Crimean Tatars.

The Russian authorities pay special attention to the freedom of conscience and religion of the Crimean Tatars. They have assisted in building ties between Spiritual Board of the Crimean Muslims and other Islamic Spiritual Boards across Russia. New mosques have been built in the Crimea.

In March 2014, immediately after reunification, the Crimean Tatar language, on an equal basis with Russian and Ukrainian, was given state status within Crimea.

A project, with the support of schools, has been launched to teach the Crimean Tatar language. Many textbooks for Crimean Tatar schools located in the Crimea have been translated.

Prominent Russian philologists have started elaborating schoolbooks for studying the Crimean
Tatar language as a native and a foreign language.

A special program on Crimean Tatar Literature has been introduced, while training of linguists and teaching personnel in this language has begun at the major Russian universities.

Preservation and development of the cultural heritage of the Crimean Tatars is among the priorities of the Russian authorities. After reunification with Russia, several festivals of Crimean Tatar culture have already been held. In order to develop the Crimean Tatars’ national culture, a cultural and ethnographic center is to be opened in Yalta, one of the Crimean cities.

The event most clearly signaling the Russian authorities’ benevolent attitude toward the Crimean Tatars is the decision of the Crimean Government to establish a Federal Crimean Tatar National and Cultural autonomy — a sort of community association allowing the people to promote independently their identity, language, education and national culture. Its head will be represented in the Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations, allowing the Tatars to solve their own problems more effectively.

Today, the Crimean Tatars are widely represented in the legislative and executive authorities of the Crimea and have the right to create the associations that guarantee their active participation in public and political life not only in the peninsula, but also all over the country.
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Today, the Crimean Tatars are widely represented in the legislative and executive authorities.

A number of delegations from Europe and Asia, including Muslim countries, have recently visited the Crimea. They witnessed in person that the Crimean Tatars fully enjoyed the rights and privileges of being Russian citizens, living in harmony with all the nationalities of our multinational homeland.

It’s also quite remarkable that the critics of Russia very often forget about the real misery in which the Crimean Tatars lived before the 2014 referendum. In particular, UN bodies and European human rights organizations repeatedly recorded massive violations of Crimean Tatars’ rights.

Particularly, starting from 1998, the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination regularly reported that the Crimean Tatars returning to their homeland didn’t have effective tools to protect their rights and faced many difficulties in obtaining Ukrainian citizenship.

In 2006, this committee took note of the fact that the Tatars in Crimea didn’t have access to vital infrastructure including water supply and sewerage facilities, electricity, gas, heating, roads and transportation.

In 2013 the UN Human Rights Committee recorded numerous cases of intolerance and hate toward the Crimean Tatars including threats and physical violence which took place under the Kiev governance.

In other words, and we are sure of it, only now do the normal living conditions for the Crimean Tatars guarantee their comprehensive development and full participation in social, political and economic life of the country. Their rights are protected by the law and they enjoy all the benefits of Russian citizenship.

As many of you may know, representatives of more than 100 nationalities and all leading religions live in our country. Russia is proud of it. And I would like to assure the Indonesian audience that the Crimean Tatars have become an integral and harmonic part of Russian multinational and multicultural society.
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The writer is Russian chargé d’affaires in Indonesia.