By Vestnik Kavkaza
The Crimean Tatar organizations of Turkey made a statement that Crimea was their only homeland. They expressed the view that “Russia’s occupation of Crimea, which was held on February 27th, 2014, was illegal and would never be recognized.” They promised to do their best to defend their position in the UN, the EU, the Hague International Court, and the European Human Rights Court. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian periodical “Observer” forecasts an escalation of inter-ethnic conflicts and “strengthening of the occupational terror of the Crimean Tatars.”
However, the Mufti of Moscow and the Central Region, a member of the Public Chamber of the RF, Albir Krganov, thinks that inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations in Crimea are stable: “The Crimean Tatars understand that by the grace of God they avoided the tragedy happening today in Donbas. And it is no secret that everything was planned to start military actions in Crimea and draw in different nations, different religions. The peninsula's residents made the right choice, and the referendum saved them from this great tragedy.”
Krganov thinks it was very important and deeply symbolic that on the 70th anniversary of the deportation a law was finally adopted on the deported peoples and the Crimean Tatar language became an official language, as well as other languages of the Russian Federation - in the national republics Muslims were able to perform the Hajj, a group was helped, on July 28 Muslims of Crimea could spend the holiday of Eid al-Adha, as the day was declared a holiday in Crimea.
Speaking of interethnic and interreligious relations, Krganov says that there is no such problem, there is a problem with personalities: “Different people in the name of the people, though people did not ask them for that, are saying that "we, the leaders of all these people want to do this here." But in fact it appears that they are solving their simple personal interests, selfish questions, not thinking about the people. We studied all that, we remember the "parade of sovereignties" in Russia and in the Volga Region, in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the Caucasus. We saw people who shouted at rallies that children of mixed marriages should be thrown into a fire. But in the end, these people today are forgotten by the people, because they are of no use to the people on any merits.”
Krganov is sure that wise heads of Tatarstan, Bashkartastan, and Chechnya - Mintimer Shaimiev, Murtaza Rakhimov, Akhmad-Hajji Kadyrov – “managed with their authority, by taking the right decisions, to preserve unity and cohesion in the country in general, and, of course, did incredibly much for their people.”
