Crimean Tatars wary of Russia referendum

Victims of Stalin's mass deportations in 1944, Crimea's Tatar Muslim minority look warily on next week's referendum on joining Russia, which could well bring the crisis on the tense peninsula to new heights. At the Great Mosque in Bakhchysaray, near the southern tip of the Black Sea region, the local Tatar representative Akhtem Chiygoz describes the March 16 vote as "illegal". The referendum is meant to confirm Thursday's decision by Crimea's pro-Moscow parliament to become part of the Russian Federation, but the authorities in Kiev have deemed it "illegitimate". Just before prayer, Chiygoz urges about 100 faithful in the nearly 500-year-old mosque to keep calm and not "give in to provocations". Rushing by, the young imam adds quickly "we are for peace, that's all". Over the past week, pro-Russian forces have gradually taken control over the rugged peninsula of two million people. While the move has been greeted by Crimea's Russian-speaking majority, it has drawn a less than enthusiastic response from the minority Tatars. "There is no extremist rhetoric in our community," says Dilaver, 33, in response to comments about radical elements in the population. "The only real threat is Russia, where there is no freedom of speech." Eskender, an elderly man in the crowd, is equally outspoken: "We will not take part in the referendum, it's organised by Russian separatists." But if a choice is to be made between annexation and a full blown conflict, joining Russia "will still be less awful than war," he admits. Reports that panicked Tatars are fleeing Crimea amid Russia's tightening grip are mere "rumours," says Eskender. A few hundred internal refugees have indeed left the peninsula in recent days and found refuge in western Ukraine, including the city of Lviv, many of them Tatars. But this represents a small fraction of the minority's population of 240,000-300,000 -- or 12-15 percent of Crimea's two million. - A vulnerable community - Tatars have had a long and tortuous relationship with Russia. Bakhchysaray was the former capital of the Crimean Khanate, a powerful Tatar state between the 15th and 18th century, but when Moscow defeated the Tatars allied with the Ottoman Empire in the late 1700s, Crimea fell to Russia. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev handed the region back to Ukraine in 1954. "It's my home, my ancestors were born here. We won't leave, even if they come and kill us," says Rustem Mamutov, whose grandfather was deported by Stalin in 1944 and died in the train taking him to central Asia. Mamutov himself only returned from Uzbekistan after the collapse of the Soviet Union at age 48. Speaking to AFP in Crimea's capital Simferopol, Nariman Dzhelalov, vice-president of the Tatar assembly -- the Mejlis -- warns that Russian-speaking Crimeans could well "behave like conquerors towards us," if the peninsula becomes reattached to Moscow. OSCE High Commissioner for Human Rights Astrid Thors, who visited Crimea this week, also expressed concern for the Tatar community. "Crimean Tatars have taken a different position to the majority population, which increases their vulnerability," she said, describing "a growing climate of fear" between ethnic groups in the region. Most Tatars seem to want their region to remain part of Ukraine, with the prospect of later joining the European Union. On the Russian-speaking Crimean side, opinions are split. "We are friends with the Tatars, they're our brothers," says Vladimir, a former army officer, now member of one of those self-defence groups seeking Crimea's attachment to Russia. In front of the regional government building in Simferopol, where unarmed pro-Russian forces still stand guard, an elderly woman wanders around looking panicked: she has heard that Tatars plan to topple the statue of Lenin that dominates the square. She says she will do everything she can to stop them, but asks not to be named. "Otherwise they'll kill me, you understand," she says.