The Sejm of Poland recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 as genocide

On July 12, the Lower House of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) adopted a resolution condemning the genocide of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 by the authorities of the Soviet Union, which deported the people from Crimea. In fact, the Sejm recognized the deportation as genocide of the Crimean Tatar people.

414 members of the Polish Parliament voted for the resolution, 16 voted against it, and two abstained.

The Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Refat Chubarov and the leader of the Crimean Tatar People, Peopleʼs Deputy of Ukraine Mustafa Dzhemilev were present at the Seimas meeting. The Seimas declared that this resolution is not about history and the past, but about the future. In other words, this is a decision to recognize deportation as genocide, stated the head of the Commission for Foreign Affairs of Poland, Pawel Kowal.

Peopleʼs deputy Mykola Knyazhytskyi, who was in the Diet, said that this is an important decision. He added that only representatives of the Confederacy party, which is considered an anti-Ukrainian force, opposed it.

• In 1944, dictator Joseph Stalin ordered the deportation of Crimean Tatars. He declared them "traitors to the Motherland" and ordered them to be deported to remote areas of Central Asia, the Urals, and Siberia. From 200 to 400 thousand Crimean Tatars were forcibly deported. At least 46% of the Crimean Tatar population died on the way to places of exile and in the first years of deportation. They were forbidden to return to the peninsula until the collapse of the Soviet Union. And after the occupation of the peninsula in 2014, Russia again started repression against the Crimean Tatars.
• In 2022, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars as an act of genocide. Earlier, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars was recognized as genocide by Latvia and Lithuania. Ukraine actively calls on the world to recognize the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 as an act of genocide.

Author: Denys Podobryi