Muslim Tartars in Crimea are having giant "X's" engraved on their doors

[joshcryer]

Last edited Sat Mar 8, 2014, 02:40 AM - Edit history (1)

At first, Rustem Kadyrov could barely make out the mark outside his house, in the Crimean town of Bakhchysarai, but it filled him with terror. It was an X, cut deep into the gray metal of the gate, and its significance cut even deeper, evoking a memory Kadyrov shares with all Crimean Tatars. Kadyrov, who is thirty-one, grew up hearing stories about marks on doors. In May of 1944, Stalin ordered his police to tag the houses of Crimean Tatars, the native Muslim residents of the peninsula. Within a matter of days, all of them—almost two hundred thousand people—were evicted from their homes, loaded onto trains, and sent to Central Asia, on the pretext that the community had collaborated with the Nazi occupation of Crimea.

Kadyrov’s grandmother, Sedeka Memetova, who was eight at the time, was among those deported. “The soldiers gave us five minutes to pack up,” she told me, when I visited the family on Thursday. “We left everything behind.” Memetova still has vivid memories of her journey into exile: the stench of the overcrowded train carriage, the wailing of a pregnant woman who sat next to her, and the solemn faces of the men who had to lower the bodies of their children off of the moving train—the only way, she said, to dispose of the dead. Four of her siblings were among the thousands of Crimean Tatars who never even made it to their final destination, Uzbekistan.

Starting in the nineteen-sixties, the Soviet Union began to allow survivors of the deportation to return. Memetova and her family came back to Crimea almost three decades ago, in 1987. This weekend, at around 3 P.M. on Saturday, Memetova’s forty-four-year-old daughter, Ava, looked out the window and saw four young men, strangers to the neighborhood, walking down the street, armed with batons. The men were also carrying pieces of paper, Ava told me—which she believes were lists of homes belonging to Crimean Tatars. Seventy years after Memetova’s deportation, her house had been marked once again. “Just as we thought we finally had a future,” she said. “How could anyone do this in the twenty-first century?”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/03/who-will-protect-the-crimean-tatars.html

Putin has achieved his goal of dividing Ukrainians from all ethnicities. Even if this is a "joke" as one Crimean put it (what a sick 'joke' that would be) it is still bullshit polarization thanks to Putin's invasion. I predicted this crap.

BTW, if there was really an ethnic Russian / Ukrainian divide before now, why are we just now hearing of it? Oh right, Putin invented it out of thin fucking air.

[AgingAmerican]

1. Crimea 2014 = Poland 1939

nt

[bemildred]

2. Nationalism does get ugly. nt

[Pretzel_Warrior]

4. Especially when goaded on by the dictatorial asshole Putin

[bemildred]

19. It gets ugly pretty much any time it gets serious. It causes wars.

The really nutty ones tend to push their luck until they take on someone who can kick their asses. (Must suppress Hitler reference.) I'm sort of waiting to see what Putin does, whether he is nuts or not.

He WAS ready to go. There was this little pause after his guy got run out of town, and then bam, he's got Crimea. But it's less than I thought he would grab.

[cali]

34. +1 that's where I'm at

except I didn't think he'd grab more than Crimea. I suspect he's not that nuts.

[bemildred]

35. I was surprised he didn't take more (edit: like I said, no coffee yet).

If we don't suck it up and deal I think he is going to take more. No I don't think he's crazy, or perhaps I should say irrational, that's a big mistake.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

3. Amazing the people on here who won't admit it

That Putin is a seriously ambitious person who has killed before and will kill again to realize a dream of adding some of the old Soviet states back to Russia no matter the cost. He needs to be frozen out financially and ostracized.

[joshcryer]

5. Putin is a shit stirrer.

I was saying this from the beginning, even while naive DUers parroted the Nazi meme coming straight out of Kremlin.

The world isn't full of psychopathic bad guys. Most people are decent humans. The Ukrainian protests had 95%+ decent humans. Even on the side of the police or even Berkut right until that final order was given.

I think it started with MattSh who has been unsurprisingly quiet since they parroted the right wing nationalist crap and Putin invaded. Every other DUer in Ukraine here basically disagrees with him. I haven't seen one Ukrainian on DU agree with him.

[Tarheel_Dem]

8. +1

[Bonobo]

6. THAT i a bad effin' sign. nt

[hrmjustin]

7. Putin is just pure evil!

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. But, but, but, I was told by a faceless poster

(Not here) that history and ancient ethnic tensions were nothing.

I would lie if I said I was surprised though. And it is not a good sign either.

[joshcryer]

10. I was indirectly told that, here.

Basically I didn't think it made sense that 1990 USSR would magically be different from 1992 Russia. But I didn't want to belabor the point so I just didn't respond. I hate kicking troll threads back to life.

It makes it all the worse that Putin is channeling that nationalism via United Russia.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Reminds me of Romanov Russia

To be honest, not even the USSR. I wonder when the Lubyanka will open for that secret police. I wonder if Cossacks at the games were more than just a signal to the locals? The Cossacks were heavily involved in the First and Second Crimean war as well as WW I and II in precisely that region, the Crimea.

[joshcryer]

12. I saw an article saying Sochi marines were redeployed to Crimea.

So it's definitely possible.

I wish I could find the article, I saw it on http://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/

But it was in Ukrainian and a google search is proving fruitless at the moment.

Cossacks are definitely making their presence known, the BBC news crew was recently blocked off by them, etc.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. I have mostly avoided, and will continue to, avoid posting on these threads.

At this point I find some amazing, and not in a good way. I know I did a lot of reading into the history of that area of the world in both under graduate and graduate school. But I also have concluded that knowledge is not wanted.

Articles like this one though, confirm some of my darkest fears. And I take all with grains of salt. After all, it does look to me that things will get very tense and all are doing a fine exercise of catapulting propaganda.

[joshcryer]

18. There are a whole lot of GD threads I avoid these days.

So much stuff being tossed. Glad to see you respond here though as I value your opinion even if we disagree on things.

I hope it really is just idiotic racist jokesters and there probably is that element in Crimea (if only to make sure those voting for the referendum stay home or "vote correctly&quot , but this is really terrifying to those Tatars who live in Crimea. I feel for them and hope things work out OK however this ends up.

[bemildred]

36. Yeah, I concur. Old school. nt

[Fumesucker]

13. ISTR you telling me how simple everything was with respect to Ukraine, Crimea and Russia

It would seem that complexity, like Putin, is rearing its many heads now.

And SnowSnookie can still see it from her front porch.

Oh one more thing, this OP is about an ethnic minority not a sauce to put on fish..

[joshcryer]

17. I reduced that to taking a position.

ie, supporting invading another country. It's simple enough to decide whether or not one supports invading another country.

I predicted Putin would inflame polarization, this is a rather simple and obvious conclusion. To consider it complex is to ignore instigations around the world. Hell, Rwanda comes to mind, where colonial powers literally invented two different ethnicities to pit against one another. This sort of shit is old as history, as far as I'm concerned.

FYI, "Tartar" is an accepted spelling. Those pointing out "tarter sauce" are a bit out of touch. I'll try to use the "accepted spelling," though... if only to shut down the dismissive tones.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. I was told by a DUer that 'hordes of Nazis' are descending upon Crimea

and therefore it was necessary for Russian soldiers to break into Ukrainian military bases and beat up Ukrainian journalists.

[Behind the Aegis]

14. It just keeps getting worse!

This is nothing more than terrorism. To what ends, does this serve?

[stevenleser]

40. It does. And it doesnt surprise me when a leader who crafts new discriminatory laws does stuff like

this. To me, it's part of the pattern. There is something in the psychological makeup of humans that I think predicts that if you are the kind of person that is going to scapegoat a vulnerable minority to prop up your popularity, you are also the type of person to invade other countries to prop up your popularity or save face in certain situations, a little of both, imho, is what we are seeing here.

It may not be anything more than indicating a kind of insane ruthlessness in keeping popularity/power, but the correlation is there.

[RobertEarl]

16. Freedom from religion is a wonderful thing

You would think the people there would have decided long ago to exclude religion and religious semaphores from their society.

Now all you Putin haters... please get back to us when you have a report about Putin carving an X on someone's door. K?

[onestepforward]

20. This sends a chill through me. n/t

[brett_jv]

21. At this point I seriously don't believe ANYTHING I read about this situation in Ukraine.

It bums me out, but I literally trust NO ONE (not even the New Yorker) to honestly tell me what's really going on over there. The propaganda from all sides in this situation has reached a fever pitch, and I just don't have enough background on the situation to know WHAT to believe at this point.

However, I find myself entertaining one possible 'conspiracy' theory ... which is that the US backed this coup, and one big reason for that is to get Europe OFF of Russian gas, and instead hooked on OUR LNG. If 'our' leader is in charge in there, and Ukraine joins EU, and IMF has sway, perhaps Russia shuts off their pipelines that feed Europe with NG, in retaliation. Or our man in Ukraine shuts them off to try to drain Russia's coffers, for their intransigence in Crimea.

Then all of a sudden .. BOOM ... we just HAVE to approve the LNG terminals and start exporting, otherwise much of Europe's going to be w/o power and heat!

I know it's a wild-ass theory, but I put nothing beneath the greedy oligarchs of this world ... WHO KNOWS who's going to do what, but I cant' shake this feeling that the 'market' of Europe in terms of natural gas supplies, is part of the equation here. We've seen the recent requests to build LNG shipping terminals in the US port areas, to make the stuff available for export (i.e. 'excess' product from fracking, that the frackers can't figure out what to do with, which is driving prices down), and now all of sudden big trouble in the country nearest to Russia, across which there's all manner of pipelines supplying Europe with NG from Russian fields ... it just seems like a bit too coincidental to me ... forgive me my tin foil ...

[joshcryer]

22. To be sure, at the rate South Koreans are building LGN tankers...

...the US would love, absolutely love to be the providers of LNG exporters. It's just a few years off yet.

If anything I think this is more a power grab for Crimea's offshore natural gas.

The US will not, under any circumstances, a small territory being annexed be damned, export it's fracking natural gas technology. There's no way. Fracking technology is the only way the US stays ahead in any economic way and it is closely guarded, no doubt.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. And warm water ports

That one has been a constant since at least 1859, let's party!!! Like it's 1859 that is.

[CJCRANE]

25. Come on DUers. Pause. Analyze. This could be propaganda

or exaggeration or hyperbole or drawing the wrong conclusion to further an agenda.

I feel like we're entering another neocon phase of wall-to-wall propaganda.

[joshcryer]

26. As the Crimean person said, "it could be a joke!"

Carving X's on peoples doors / gates. A joke!

[CJCRANE]

27. No, not a joke. But this is one instance, one person. Think about propaganda techniques.

A form of propaganda is to take one instance and extrapolate it out to tar a whole community.

Remember Ashley Todd who carved a backwards "B" on her face?

[joshcryer]

28. The journalist counted 5 instances.

But fair enough, I suppose.

Natalia Antelava's perspective, however, I trust. She seems to be progressive to me. But who cares about someone who reports on anti-gay totalitarianism and Uzbekistan dictators...

[CJCRANE]

29. Good point, but a lot of the article was about events 70 years ago.

I'm not saying that's not relevant to provide the context but it just seems to be leaping to conclusions.

I also feel like there are attempts on some sides to inflame things rather than keep a balanced view.

[joshcryer]

30. Sure, but by the same token, the UPA shit happened 70 years ago.

But DUers to this day blame Ukrainians for being Nazi sympathizers. From the Ukrainians I have seen they are ashamed of that past history and would disavow it instantly. The far right wing nationalists are small in numbers, so where are we? Back at square one.

I frankly blame Putin for trying to dredge up these old nationalist undertones and polarized distinctions. Ukrainians from what I've seen and from neutral studies are not ethnically divided.

[Bluenorthwest]

31. During this crisis I have seen many people declare that Crimea has a Russian majority

But not one of them mentioned why, and the why is that the indigenous people were ethnically cleansed and transported to another distant country. 'We are the majority now!!!!'
If one side is going to declare their 'majority' as reason for action, then the nature and origin of that majority status is most certainly a valid subject.

[Igel]

38. I have.

But there aren't really any truly "indigenous" peoples. The Tatars were invaders there at one point. They were just well established. After the Tatars the next people in were probably Russians, since they conquered the area and it was a Russian resort. Poor Ukrainians ("Little Russians" at the time) would have been imported only for laborers, and even then quickly Russified.

Greeks were before the Tatars. Slavs were also in the area before them. Also some Arabs. Probably descendents of Sarmatians.

The area had a hard go of it for 500 years before the Tatars, what with all the slave trade that was going on. Muslim world was frantic for slaves and continually raided that part of Ukraine for supplies for the eastern part of the Muslim world. There's a reason that "Slav" so resembles "slave". (In the Western part of the Muslim world the slaves were black, and the Iberians managed to learn this well and expand and Christianize the Muslim slave trade in black slaves, centered at the time in Benghazi.)

[Renew Deal]

33. There was a story going around a couple days ago about Turkey defending Tatars

So I think this is legit

[Igel]

37. Lots of things could fit that bill.

One usually hits one's peak with critical thinking the second that one hears something that's disagreeable or not in accord with what one already believes and wants to believe.


Most of the pretext for the Russian troops' being in Crimea wasn't believable. The idea that the Maidan was occupied by a bunch of neo-nazi banderist skinhead fascists wasn't believable. The idea that Putin would ride in on a white tank to defend the sanctity on innocence of pure, democratic, pacifist Russians wasn't believable. That Yanukovich was a good guy and deserved the support of fellow progressives the world over wasn't believable.

Yet that's what we were told. RT ws the Real Truth station, the only source that was truly "Putin" out the unvarnished truth about the situation.

It was much more fun to read the Ukrainian and Russian sources and wonder how it was they were published in the same area yet seemed to be living in different worlds.

Yet the same thing is now being happened ("happen" as a causative verb) in Crimea, where anything not approved by Aksenov is basically not allowed--blocked cable media, blocked Internet, blocked rebroadcasting of Ukrainian networks. Only Russian-approved sources are allowed, and they're full of stories of the grandeur of being allowed to live under Russia and the horror that is Russian life in Ukraine.

[CJCRANE]

39. Except that you're doing the either/or thing. All one side is true or the other side is true.

I'm not whitewashing Russia's actions.

I'm just saying there is mixture of different motives for the information we receive and how we interpret it.

[ananda]

32. A sad situation for so many.

For Putin and the ptb, this is about economic hegemony and pipelines.

For the people, however, it's about national identity. And when a people
become divided against each other, that works very well for the ptb, although
it's very tragic for the people themselves... x's carved on doors, deportations,
persons turned against persons, religions against religions, terrorism, purges,
attacks on and killings of intellectuals, and so on. There are signs of the
beginnings of this in the Ukraine.

After the shit is stirred and the pipelines are in place, there will be considerable
angst and guilt, but mostly the country will go on to survive in a rather gray,
depressed fashion. The profiteers, mercenaries, and rightwing paramilitaries
will do very well, though.

[ProSense]

41. A commentary on the Tartars:

Crimea Tatars: 'Homeland' at stake
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/03/crimea-tatars-homeland-at-stake-2014355402511335.html