Los Crimean Tatars – the largest of the three communities that inhabit Ukraine – see their identity threatened while their home remains under Russian occupation. For tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, the dream of returning home may be closer to coming true than it has ever been in the past nine years, and it depends on the success of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Between 2,000 and 3,000 Crimean Tatars have taken refuge in Odessa (south) after their region was annexed by Russia in 2014, according to EFE Mefa, who co-hosted an event in Odessa on Wednesday to coincide with the World Day of Indigenous Peoples. . “At first glance, there are many nationalities in Russia. But if you take a closer look, they have all been losing their distinctive features. We don’t want the same thing to happen to us,” he adds.
Mefa describes Moscow’s measures against the Crimean Tatars as “genocide” and alludes to the extermination of the intellectual elites and forced deportations produced over the past 250 years.
In the background, songs are played in Ukrainian and in the language of the Crimean Tatars, of Turkic origin, while hundreds of visitors are served the typical dish known as “plov” and made with rice, spices and raisins.
Emine, a 14-year-old girl dressed in a traditional costume, tells EFE that many Tatars they began to appreciate their identity and their language in the aftermath of the Russian occupation of Crimea.