Canada recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars as genocide. Photo: facebook.com/yuliya.kovaliv
The House of Commons of Canada unanimously approved a resolution recognizing the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet regime in 1944 as an act of genocide. Yuliya Kovaliv, Ambassador of Ukraine, announced this on her Facebook page.
From now on, every year on May 18 Canada will mark Crimean Tatar Deportation (Sürgünlik) Memorial Day.
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars is recognized as genocide in Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania. In 2019, such an initiative was adopted by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament of Canada.
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars is one of the Soviet totalitarian regime crimes. This is a genocide, an integral part of which was the forced eviction of the Crimean Tatars from their historical homeland — from the Crimea. Ethnic cleansing by order of Joseph Stalin lasted from May 18–21, 1944.
In total, according to official data, 191,044 Crimean Tatars were deported to remote regions of the Soviet Union — from the northern Cis-Urals region to the republics of Central Asia, and according to the self-census conducted by the National Movement of Crimean Tatars — 423,100. During the eviction and in the first years after it, from 27%, according to the official data of the NKVD, to 46.2% of the deported died, or from a third to about half of the Crimean people.