Arseniy Yatsenyuk: Nothing will ever destroy the national dignity of the Crimean Tatar people
"We have only one option – to fight until we win. It is our goal - to return Crimea, to return our native land, national dignity. And to make those who were mocking on this pay a high price for that," said Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk during a Requiem evening to commemorate the victims of deportation of Crimean Tatars on Monday, May 18, on the Day of struggle for the rights of the Crimean Tatar people.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk congratulated those present speaking the Crimean Tatar language.
He noted that the national anthem of the Crimean Tatars, which sounded during the evening, is a real reflection of the Crimean Tatar people: "It's deep, dramatic, but strong, confident and revealing faith in the future".
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The Prime Minister
stressed that this nation had survived a lot: "It suffered attempts to be
destroyed by Stalin. 45 years of exile, 45 years of expulsion from their own land.
Someone might have felt disappointment. Someone couldn’t return to Crimea.
But the people returned. The nation cannot be destroyed". "Stalin failed
to annihilate the Crimean Tatar people. Either the Bolshevik or the Soviet
regimes failed to destroy the Ukrainian people as well. We've survived a great
number of tragedies. But you’ve survived, we’ve survived - we have endured
together. And we will definitely win", accentuated Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The Prime Minister
recalled the words of the leader of the Crimean Tatar people Mustafa Dzhemilev, whom he had met in 2001 when he had been
appointed Minister of Economy of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea:
"Mustafa Dzhemilev during one of seven trials,
where he was tried "by the Soviets" said: "No repressions can ever
kill national dignity inside me". Nothing will ever kill the national
dignity of the Crimean Tatar people – you have proved it with a centuries-long
fight for your land and your people." "Now your
land, our land is temporarily occupied. All condemn the annexation of Crimea,
the whole world rose up against it. And our common task – not just in words
but in deeds, to return Crimea to Ukraine, and to the Crimean Tatar people -
their land," he said. He also reminded the words of a Crimean Tatar poet
and journalist Lilia Budzhurova in which she said
that the Russian occupation authorities ban the Crimean Tatars “to weep, say,
talk and listen”. “It won’t be that way,” promised Arseniy Yatsenyuk. "Russia,
which is actually a member of the United Nations Organization and a permanent
member of the UN Security Council, Russia, which, like Ukraine, is a
co-founder of the United Nations, has no right to destroy international law,
to destroy the UN Charter and the basic principles of the rights and freedoms
of human and citizen. Russia should pay the price for the illegal annexation
of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine", stressed the Head of Government. |