Monday 5 May 2014

Another date for the diary

Sunday 18 May is the seventieth anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Last year, Simferopol City Council tried to ban the Day of Remembrance, but an estimated 35-40,000 Tatars turned up for a commemoration in the central square.

Today Crimea's new Russian masters have threatened to prosecute the 5000 Tatars who marched in support of the their leader Mustafa Cemilev when he was refused entry at the new border.

You can imagine what's likely to happen in Simferopol in two Sundays' time.

That means the next three weekends promise to be flashpoints (9 May - Victory Day: 11 May - "referendum" in "Donetsk People's Republic"; 18 May - Crimean Tatar deportation commemoration; 25 May - Ukrainian presidential elections).

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