A Tatar’s courage never flags
ON May 14th Crimea’s indigenous Tatars sat glued to their screens, watching as Jamala, a Ukrainian singer of Tatar descent, won the Eurovision song contest. Jamala’s song “1944” commemorated Stalin’s brutal deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population. For Russia’s government, the song was an infuriating breach of the contest’s ban on politics. For Tatars, it was a gesture of defiance. Most Tatars refuse to accept Russia’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014. As a result, they have been singled out for punishment.
In Crimea every Tatar family has stories of the deportation. Eighty-one-year-old Refat Selyamiev still …read more
Source: The Economist
