Elnara Asanova lives alone with four small children. Her husband, an ethnic Tatar (pronounced TAH-ter), is in jail. In April 2015, when she was seven months pregnant, police grabbed him from their village streets. His crime? He spoke against Russia’s forced annexation of Crimea.
Elnara is not allowed to visit her husband. But when he had a court hearing, she traveled to be nearby. She took the new baby, so her husband could glimpse his child as he was led to the courtroom. The court has refused bail.
"They say he will run away. But where to?" says Elnara. She points to her children. "We live in the country. You can't survive here without a husband."
Crimea is a square peninsula on the north side of the Black Sea. It has been settled and occupied many times in history. In the 13th century, a group of Muslims called Tatars settled there.
Crimea became a part of the Russian Empire in 1783. In 1944, Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator, ordered the immediate deportation of Crimea’s Tatars. He claimed they were collaborating with Nazi Germany against Russia. In the space of three days, the peninsula was emptied of 200,000 Tatars. Many died over the following weeks of homelessness. Of those that lived, a significant population settled in Ukraine. They were not allowed to return to Crimea until the 1980s.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Crimea became an autonomous republic of Ukraine. Today, about 15% of Crimea’s population are Tatars. Most are Muslim in tradition but secular (not following the faith).
The majority of people in Crimea are ethnic Russian. That majority supports the March 2014 annexation of Crimea into Russia. But the 300,000 ethnic Tatars living there describe growing persecution from their community leaders under Russian leadership. Tatar language classes have been closed. Tatar businesses are met with suspicion and less customer traffic. Neighbors don’t trust one another. Those who are bold to speak against the pressures may end up in jail—like Elnara’s husband. Younger Tatars feeling repressed are looking toward activism as a response.
Once a businessman with assets in Moscow, Lenur Islyamov now leads a movement to retaliate against Russian persecution in Crimea. His group imposed a blockade to keep trade goods from crossing into Crimea. “Most of us don’t want to go to war,” says Islyamov. “We want to make sandwiches, take our children to school, go shopping—but we’ve been forced to do this.”
Tatar activists don’t have a history of violence. But they have been credited with widespread power outages which left thousands without heat or light for days. Tatars say the power cuts drew the world’s attention to injustice in Crimea. They called the inconvenience “nothing” compared to hardships their people group has survived. They hope the disruptions will prompt those who support Russian annexation to leave the Crimean peninsula.
Eventually, the Taters would like to see Crimea governing itself again as part of Ukraine.
