The deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 is a crime of genocide and a manifestation of the criminal nature of the ethnic policy of Stalinism. 

• In May 1944, in the matter of two days, more than 183 thousand Crimean Tatars were forcibly deported from Crimea to Siberia, the Urals and Central Asia as a form of collective punishment.
• According to estimates, during the first years of deportation up to 46% Crimean Tatars perished in the so-called “special settlements” from hunger, diseases, abuse and hard labour.
• The policy of ethnocide against deported peoples was not limited to evictions outside their ethnic territories, but was accompanied by looting of their property, destruction of their historical memory, language and culture.
• Unlike most other deported peoples who got the possibility to return to their homeland in the late 1950s, the Crimean Tatars were deprived of this right. Only after independence of Ukraine, the real return of Crimean Tatars became possible.

With the illegal temporary occupation in 2014 , the second, now hybrid, deportation of Crimean Tatars and an artificial change in the demographic composition of the peninsula began. It is marked with political, religious, cultural persecutions of the Crimean Tatars. 

• Since the unfolding of Russian aggression against Ukraine in Crimea in 2014 more than 43 000 people left Crimea over intimidation, persecution and fears of the return of the past in its worst manifestations. Up to 500,000 Russians moved into the territory of Crimea (according to the human right NGO CrimeaSOS data).
• About 100 citizens of Ukraine, most of them Crimean Tatars, are illegally detained or convicted by Russia for political reasons in the territory of the Russian Federation and temporarily occupied Crimea.
• On 26 April 2016, an illegal judicial body of the occupying state passed a decision to ban the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people due to the recognition of its activities as extremist. Thus, almost 2,500 members of national and local mejlises were outlawed.
• Before the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, there were 2,083 religious organizations on its territory. So far, only about 700 have survived the campaign of persecution (as of 2019).
• Independent media were wiped out. Human rights activists have recorded more than 300 violations of journalists' rights since 2014. Out of 3000 registered media outlets only 232 managed to survive "re-registration”. Obviously, they had to succumb to the occupation administration censorship. All 12 independent Crimean Tatar media outlets left the peninsula due to persecution.
• The occupying power continues to attack such inalienable rights of Crimean Tatars as education in the native language. While in 2013 the Crimean Tatar language was studied by 18,020 schoolchildren (8.6%) out of a total of 210,000 schoolchildren in Crimea, as of January 31, 2019 only 3.1% of children study the Crimean Tatar language.

International recognition of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 as a genocide shall be used as a tool to stop new crackdown on Crimean Tatars by Russian occupation administration.

• The dire human rights situation in Crimea under Russian occupation invokes the necessity to restore historical justice with regard to Crimean Tatars, to take actions to honour the innocent victims of deportation, condemn this crime of the totalitarian communist regime and recognize the deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea in 1944 as genocide of the Crimean Tatar people.
• At the same time, we call on international community to continue exerting pressure on Russia and to strengthen sanctions to ensure the implementation of the ICJ Order and stop the oppression of the Crimean Tatar community in the temporarily occupied peninsula.