On November 2-3 President Leonid Kuchma opened the fourth meeting of the Council of Representatives of the Crimean Tatar People in Simferopol. The council was founded over two years ago to speed the adaptation and integration of the former deported people into Ukrainian society. This problem has existed in Ukraine for at least fifteen years. However, there are still many unanswered questions, often leading to conflict. The major achievement, President Kuchma noted in his speech, consists in that the council has proven in practice that “all problems can be solved only through dialog and constructive cooperation.” The Crimea is ready to become “a proving ground for Ukraine, where it will be possible not only to work through the practice of harmonizing the relations between ethnic groups, but remove the existing distortions in budget relations, land and tax laws, and many other issues,” Parliament Speaker Borys Deich said at the meeting.
At the meeting the president interrupted Vice Prime Minister Volodymyr Semynozhenko’s report and enumerated many measures, which had not been implemented by the governments of both Ukraine and the Crimea. Even in relatively successful directions the tempo dissatisfied the president: in the ninth months of 2002 only 20% of the planned annual volume of gas lines and 46% of water pipes were constructed; only 1,500 of the planned 13,000 square meters of housing were built.
People’s Deputy and Chairman of the Council of Representatives of the Crimean Tatars Under the President of Ukraine Mustafa Dzhemiliov recalled that over 110,000 forcibly displaced persons still lack dwellings of their own. In addition, of 136,000 able-bodied returnees less than half are employed. Around 300 villages and regions of compact settlement were created for the repatriates in the Crimea. Only 40% of them are provided with water, while 15% still lack electricity. This year 45,000,000 hryvnias were earmarked for solving the repatriates’ problems in Ukrainian budget and 15,300,000 hryvnias in the one of the Crimea. However, in reality only around 50% of this sum has been spent.
Solving the political and legal problems connected with the repatriates’ adaptation is also slow. Due to the high level of their political activity in the 2002 elections, the Crimean Tatars were able to be included into representative government bodies. Thus, now 14% deputies in the Crimean councils of all levels are Crimean Tatars.
This year will mark the tenth anniversary since Verkhovna Rada passed the law On National Minorities in Ukraine, which in part does not answer the needs of Ukraine and the multinational Crimea anymore. New President of the State Committee on Nationalities Hennady Moskal, who had visited the Crimea on the eve of the meeting of the Council of Representatives of the Crimean Tatar People, announced that his department is already working out a bill on national minorities. However, the major issue in this sphere is passing the law On the Status of the Crimean Tatar People in Ukraine, believes the Mejlis Chairman Mustafa Dzhemiliov. A draft law has been circulating in the parliamentary committees for seven years, while nobody is confident whether it will be passed at all. Moreover, in his speech at the council’s session he criticized the bill On Restoring the Rights of the Former Deported Persons, prepared by the Cabinet of Ministers. A number of the Crimean Tatar public organizations, including the Organization of the Crimean Tatar National Movement (OCTNM), Crimean Tatar National Movement (CTNM), the Millet social and political movement, and the All- Ukrainian Novy Svit [New World] Party of International Justice have already started collecting signatures in the Crimea for a new more radical law On Rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar People, a “people’s draft, which has already been presented to the authorities, international organizations, and foreign embassies in Ukraine.” The bill, in part, envisages restoring Crimean Tatar national-territorial autonomy in Ukraine, guaranteed representation of the Crimean Tatar people in all bodies of state power, recognizing the Crimean Tatar language as official in the autonomous republic, restoring the historic names of settlements in the Crimea, and reparation of damages caused to the Crimean Tatars as a result of various acts of repression and deportation.
The problem of obtaining farmland remains of vital importance to the Crimean Tatars. While 47% of the local population have already got their land allotments, only 18%, or 73,000, of the repatriates have become landowners so far, obtaining in total around 160,000 hectares. For one [Slavic] villager the level of provision with land is 2.24 hectares, while for a repatriate it is only 1.2. Moreover, in many cases this land is of significantly worse quality: situated far from settlements, less fertile, requiring additional cultivation and considerable investment. To remove this obvious distortion, in Mustafa Dzhemiliov’s words, official good will is vital, while in reality at the local level “chauvinism and infringement of the Crimean Tatars’ rights” prevail.
