Change of course in the Crimea? A breach of international law is a breach of international law!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) urged the German Federal Government on Monday to at least advocate an OSCE mission to the peninsula annexed by Russia, in order to protect the Crimean Tatars. ‘Even if Germany and the EU just accept that Moscow has taken over power of the Crimea, they still cannot abandon the Crimean Tatars,’ explained the STP representative for the CIS countries, Sarah Reinke, in Berlin. ‘The annexation of the Crimea is a violation of international law. Legitimising this shakes the very foundations of our democratic society. The least we can do is to allow OSCE observers into the Crimea to document the human rights situation and to stand by victims of civil rights and human rights violations in court.’ Germany will take over OSCE chairmanship on January 1st 2016. However, preparatory discussions about such a mission must be initiated by Germany immediately.

Chancellor Angela Merkel stated at the close of the Ukraine talks in Paris on October 2nd 2015: the ‘regulatory process is complete when the Ukraine restores its sovereignty (...) not in the Crimea, but over the rest of the country.’ The STP was shocked to realise that the Crimean Tatars’ fears had become reality - the EU accepts Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. Merkel emphasised in May of this year that the appropriation of the Crimea was a ‘criminal and illegal annexation’.

The Crimean Tatars suffer the most from systematic persecution and discrimination in the Crimea. They have no state to stand up for their protection. In 1944, Stalin’s Red Army deported 189,000 Crimean Tatars to Central Asia, 45% of whom died. This crime is internationally recognised as genocide. Today, roughly 300,000 Crimean Tatars live under a regime that sees them as successors to the offenders. Despite systematic persecution, they try to live with the status quo - but, as the Crimea’s indigenous people, they have the right to autonomy, both politically and culturally. The STP demands that the Crimean Tatars’ political institutions are recognised, and their language protected and further developed. They must be allowed to live out their beliefs and traditions in freedom, and their independent media must be restored.