On October 18, Azerbaijan celebrates the Day of the Restoration of Independence. It was on this date in 1991 that the republic’s Supreme Soviet adopted a Constitutional Act, formalizing the country’s departure from the Soviet system and the restoration of its state sovereignty.
On the eve of the memorable date of the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people, police officers make mass rounds of the houses of their representatives - activists, lawyers and journalists. They are warned by video about the inadmissibility of extremist actions.
The security forces have already visited lawyers Lila Gemedzhi, Rustem Kyamilev and Nazim Sheikhmambetov, activist Seit-Osman Karaliev, and citizen journalist Lutfiya Zudieva. They belong to those who, according to law enforcement officers, may take illegal actions.
May 18 will mark 80 years since the beginning of the deportation of Crimean Tatars from their historical homeland to Central Asia. In the first years alone, from 20% to 46% of people died from hunger and disease.
The majority of people were forcibly resettled to Uzbekistan (151,136 people), as well as to adjacent areas of Kazakhstan (4,286 people) and Tajikistan. Small groups were sent to the RSFSR: to the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (8597 people), to the Southern Urals and to the Kostroma region.
The deportation claimed the lives of almost half of the Crimean Tatars, and the rehabilitation of the people during the USSR never happened.