“If the Ukrainian government agrees to respect the rights of the Crimean Tartars, we’ll feel ourselves at home, and we’ll be law-abiding citizens”, remarked Mustafa Dzhemilev, a member of the political party Our Ukraine: People’s Self-defence and a Crimean Tartar community leader, at a roundtable dedicated to the possibility of the repetition of the Kosovo scenario in the Ukraine. He noted that the Ukrainian state must accept the legitimacy of the Kurultay (the traditional Crimean Tartar assembly). “We demand that the Ukraine restore the national autonomy of our territory within the framework of a sovereign democratic state. This isn’t yet a reality, since the corresponding changes to the constitution authorising our autonomy haven’t yet been made. We’ll raise the questions of the right of Crimean Tartars to use their native language, increasing the number of Crimean Tartars in all government bodies, returning the old Tartar names to our towns and regions, and the creation of an educational system in the Tartar language”. He added that self-determination doesn’t require the creation of an independent state. “Self-determination means that a people independently define their culture, where they live, and who they are”, Mr Dzhemilev concluded.
IA Regnum
