CRIMEAN TATARS FAST FOR POLITICAL REPRESENTATION.

CRIMEAN TATARS FAST FOR POLITICAL REPRESENTATION.

Ten Tatar deputies to Crimea’s parliament began a hunger strike yesterday in the parliament building, demanding that Crimea’s new constitution maintain the legislative seats reserved for the Tatar community’s representatives and institute Tatar seats on local councils. The draft of the new constitution would eliminate the privilege of reserved parliamentary seats for Tatars and the much smaller Armenian, Greek, Bulgarian, and German ethnic minorities. (12)

More than 200,000 Crimean Tatars, survivors of Stalin’s mass deportation and their descendants, were able in recent years to filter back to Crimea, to a largely unsympathetic reception from local Russians. Tatar political representatives have strongly supported Ukrainian sovereignty in Crimea against Russian irredentism. The Ukrainian government lacks the means to finance the Tatars’ repatriation and social integration in Crimea, and is currently soliciting international support for this effort on behalf of Tatars, Germans, and other ethnic groups repressed by Soviet rule.

EU Rewards Moldovan Reforms.