The Parliament of Estonia recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars as genocide

The Estonian Parliament recognized the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet regime in 1944 as an act of genocide. This statement was supported by 83 MPs.

This is reported by "Crimean Platform".

The document, which was supported by the Parliament of Estonia, condemned the mass extermination of the Crimean Tatars and their forced deportation from the Crimean Peninsula. The statement also states that after the occupation of Crimea in 2014, Russia continues its genocidal policy against the Crimean Tatars, destroying their identity.

Previously, the deportation was recognized as an act of genocide of the Crimean Tatar people in 2015 by Ukraine, in 2019 by Latvia and Lithuania, in 2022 by the Canadian House of Commons, and in 2024 by Poland.

Deportation of Crimean Tatars

On May 11, 1944, Joseph Stalin personally signed the resolution of the State Defense Committee on organizing the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. The forced eviction operation under the control of the NKVD began early in the morning on May 18. Everyone was deported — children, women, the elderly and people with disabilities. Tatars were taken to railway stations by trucks. From there, they were sent immediately or after two or three days to remote areas of Central Asia, the Urals, and Siberia.

The main phase of the deportation operation ended on the evening of May 20. Almost 70 echelons were sent from Crimea to the east. During the few weeks spent on the road, almost eight thousand people died, mostly old people and children. Crimean Tatars who remained in Crimea were evicted during the deportation of Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians from the peninsula at the end of June of the same year. Two hundred thousand people is the approximate number of deported Crimean Tatars, according to unofficial data there were twice as many.

After the deportation of the Crimean Tatars to the peninsula, by order of Stalin, immigrants were sent, primarily from the Russian hinterland — the Kursk, Voronezh, and Belgorod regions, the Volga region, and the northern regions.

Crimean Tatars were forbidden to return to the peninsula until 1989. Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Canada recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars as genocide. But Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR, did not conduct any investigation of this crime and did not pay any compensation.

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