Jul 22, 2004

Crimean Tatars: Statement at the WGIP


Statement by Nadir Bekir, Mejilis of Crimean Tatar People
Untitled Document

The problem of the conflict resolution is perhaps the most important problem for all Indigenous Peoples of the World. Because nor cultural heritage protection, nor land rights, nor the very phisical life of Indigenous Peoples, nothing else may take a place at the circumstances of the escalation of the conflict towards the violence and military clashes.

I didn't mention the violence occasionally. All of us we know that most of the Governments have an excellent experience of the resolution conflicts with the Indigenous Peoples through the artificial escalation of conflicts firstly provoced by Governments themselves in order to get that dreamed point when the Governments will have a right to use all police and military measures for the phisical opression or even better for the extermination of Indigenous Peoples.

It was typical in our history it is not less typical now.

I don't need to remind the concrete situations and millions of the tortured and murdered at Americas, Asia; Pacific and Africa. Everybody sitting here has his own martirolog of the conflicts imposed us by Governments. Hitler is treated as one of the most monstrous inhumane beings. But what did he do in reality ? Only the same things in Europe as other colonisers at other continents ! And with the same motivations : the space to live to it's own nation, the message of the civilisation, the biological or cultural non-equity of the Indigenous inhabitants, the non-recognition of them like peoples or nations. Wasn't it ?

While they killing us the legal rules and democracy was not regarded as a meaning for the resolution of their conflicts with us. Now more or less they propose us the legal procedures established bu themselves for the resolution of the conflicts which were not solved by them by the violence earlier.

As a rule these procedures are not actually available or appropriate to us because they againe are based on their values and are managed by their representatives/agents let they be called judges or attorneys.

In some cases as in Ukraine they possessing and brutally exploiting our land, resources, even real estate and personal belongings of Crimean Tatars still demonstrate something like not understanding what are Indigenous Peoples, who are Indigenous Peoples in Ukraine, why Crimean Tatars are a people but not the only group of the citizens in the democratic European State of Ukraine ? And they suffer too mach in their attempts to understand why Crimean Tatars try to find peaceful, just and based on the International Law settlement of our problems and resist to the so called Cossaks arranged and encouraging by Ukrainian State, to the Russian neo-Nazis, skinheads protected by Ukrainian police/militia and Prosecutor office, to the paramilitary mercenaries directed against the Crimean Tatar's protesters and finally to the openly terrorizing civilians special troops of Ukraine exclusively by the peaceful actions ? They would like we to take arms in order to accuse us as terrorists and to begin to kill openly again.

But we believe into peace struggle and into the International Law. However no one conflict will be solved appropriately if there won't be created the special plenipotentiary neutral and powerful International Tribunal where Indigenous Peoples might apply and call upon their Governments in the cases if the conflict couldn't be resolved through the internal jurisprudence of the States. This is my conclusion based on the experience of my people.