Word: crimea
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Once back, though, the Tatars' troubles were hardly ended. The houses many had once owned or lived in were now occupied by Russian settlers. "I came and saw an old couple living in my parents' house," says Osmanov, standing in the old Tatar quarter of Simferopol, Crimea's capital. "I couldn't have tried to kick them out. What would have been the difference between me doing that and what happened...
...Local government, with its control over land distribution, is often seen as the driving force behind the corruption that plagues Crimea...
...Only babies don't know that Crimean parliamentary deputies are criminals," Hennady Moskal, the Ukrainian president's former representative in Crimea, once remarked. Violent clashes between local law enforcement bodies and Tatar settlers have occurred in the past. Tensions over Yani Qirim threatened to boil over in January, when inhabitants say they got word of a police decision to storm the settlement, and 3,000 Tatars set up camp for several days to offer protection. "We will defend our homes and families," says Khalilov. And not only from the police. In 2007, Ukranian media reported that representatives of the developer...
...swept through what is now southern Russia and Ukraine in the 13th century, the Muslim Tatar khans ruled the Crimean peninsula until it was annexed by Russia in 1783. A summer holiday destination during the Soviet period and still home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, many Russians see Crimea as part of their country, a fact that rankles the Tatars...
...Tatar leaders are clear about who they think is behind the attempts to provoke conflicts and instability in Crimea. "I don't think Russia is counting on getting Crimea back, but for them it's important to keep it in a state of permanent stress," says Mustafa Jemilev, a deputy in Ukraine's parliament and the leader of the Tatars' unofficial parliament, the Mejlis. "Some Russian newspapers [in Crimea] publish such nasty rubbish about Tatars. There are provocations against us, but it's not our culture to respond to these with violence." Jemilev, who spent 15 years in prison camps...