Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to UN urges to recognize deportation of Crimean Tatars as crime

Ukraine’s delegation to the UN will continue making every effort to ensure that the deportation of Crimean Tatars by Stalin’s regime in 1944 is officially recognized as an international crime.

"Ukraine will continue to spear no effort to make the deportation of Crimean Tatars recognized as crime and remembered forever," Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya said in a video address to the United Nations member states on Monday.

In this regard, he stressed that silencing of crimes and turning blind eye on aggression led to impunity and perpetuated occupation.

"The UN was established to prevent wars and human rights violations," the diplomat said.

Kyslytsya recalled that dozens of thousands of Crimean Tatars had died, lost their relatives and loved ones during the deportation in 1944, and any mention of the tragedy was persecuted by the regime.

"The memory and knowledge of this tragedy had been suppressed by the Soviet Union for decades. Today, Putin consciously glorifies Stalin. He has unleashed yet another campaign of violence and repression in the occupied Crimea," Kyslytsya said.

The Ukrainian Permanent Representative to UN stressed that the incumbent Russian president "utilizes Stalin's methods of terror and expulsion of Crimean Tatars" to solidify the illegal occupation of the peninsula.

The deportation of Crimean Tatars, which began on May 18, 1944 and lasted for several days, was one of the biggest crimes committed by the USSR during World War II.

In 2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine recognized the actions of the Soviet regime as genocide and declared May 18 the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Deportation of the Crimean Tatar People.

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