Any Politician justifying Stalin’s Crime against the Crimean Tatar People is unacceptable

The Head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, Mustafa Dzhemiliev has commented to TV 1 + 1 on the appointment by President Yanukovych of Anatoly Mohylyov Prime Minister of the Crimea. 

“We have long known Anatoly Mohylyov. At one time he was Head of the Crimean Police. His time in the Crimea did not leave, to put it mildly, a pleasant impression. These were, in the first instance, the well-known events of 2007 on the Ai-Petri Plateau which virtually led to wide-scale inter-ethnic conflict due to the brutal treatment by MIA officers of peaceful civilians and open gunfire on people who were unarmed. A criminal investigation was then initiated, yet with the change in regime, it was “shelved”.

Mustafa Dzhemiliev went on to say that he had heard that Mohylyov supposedly answered questions by high-ranking figures about how he could be Prime Minister of the Crimea given his difficult relations with the Crimean Tatars, in a dismissive manner, promising to “clean bodies of power of Crimean Tatars”.

“In fact at the present time he won’t have to clear the bodies of power of Crimean Tatars. Virtually none of them are left there since virtually all posts have been occupied by “the most talented people” from outside the Crimea, mainly from Makiyivka (the Donetsk region – translator).

However the most unacceptable thing for us is that Mohylyov in the press openly excused Stalin’s criminal decision to forcibly deport the Crimean Tatar People from their historical homeland, the Crimea, claiming that it was correct because, he asserted, the Crimean Tatars were traitors. “

Mustafa Dzhemiliev comments that people were held liable for such views even in Soviet times, yet he, as a National Deputy (MP of the Ukrainian parliament) had demanded that the Prosecutor General’s Office prosecute Mohylyov for such utterances. He says that he was basically told that each person has a right to express their point of view. Mr Dzhemiliev asked what, in that case, Article 161 which envisages punishment for inciting inter-ethnic enmity was for.  He received no answer.

He then drafted a resolution in the Verkhovna Rada demanding that Mohylyov be dismissed from his post as Minister of Internal Affairs, but the motion was not supported by the ruling coalition.

“Clearly today’s agreement of Mohylyov’s candidacy for the post of Head of the Council of Ministers of the Crimea arouses immense bemusement. Perhaps in the near future the public will receive answers to many questions arising in the Crimea in connection with this decision”.

He stressed that if Mohylyov’s words had been distorted, then he as a public figure was obliged to make an official statement and explain his position, both with regard to his assessment of the Deportation of “traitors of the motherland” and reinstatement of the rights of the deported, and on the use of weapons against unarmed people on Ai-Petri. We will then be able to coordinate our position accordingly”.