Polish Sejm recognizes deportation of Crimean Tatars as genocide
Photo: Polish Sejm recognizes deportation of Crimean Tatars as genocide (Getty Images)
On Friday, July 12, the Polish Sejm adopted a resolution to commemorate the victims of the 1944 genocide of Crimean Tatars, who were deported from Crimea by the Soviet authorities, according to PAP.
It is reported that 414 deputies voted in favor of the resolution, 16 were against, and two abstained.
According to the resolution, on the morning of May 18, 1944, the USSR authorities began the deportation of Crimean Tatars from the Crimean peninsula. Within three days, nearly 200,000 men, women, and children were herded into cattle cars and deported to Central Asia and Siberia in inhumane conditions.
The resolution states that "the deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea in 1944 and its consequences were an act of genocide against the Crimean Tatar people."
"Ukraine honors the memory of the victims of the Soviet genocide on May 18 - the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People in 1944," the document says.
The resolution also recalls that in 2014, 70 years after this crime, Russia illegally annexed the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, which are part of Ukraine, and then began to systematically persecute Crimean Tatars living on the peninsula.
Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament - ed.) called on the world to recognize the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 as an act of genocide.
