12 July 2024

The Polish Sejm Recognized the Deportation of 1944 as Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People

The Sejm of the Republic of Poland has today approved the Resolution “On commemorating the victims of the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people” by a majority of 414 votes in favor (16 against, and 2 abstentions). The resolution states that the deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea in 1944 and its consequences were an act of genocide against the Crimean Tatar people. Furthermore, the resolution cites the offenses perpetrated by the Russian Federation in the context of its military aggression against Ukraine.

In May 1944, following Stalin’s criminal directive, over 200,000 Crimean Tatars were deported to Central Asia and the Ural Mountains in a mere two days, a distance of thousands of kilometers from their homes and native Crimea. It is estimated that at least 46% of the Crimean Tatar population perished en route to exile and during the first few years of the deportation. At that time, there were almost no indigenous people left on the peninsula, and the invaders implemented a policy of total Russification, which included the eradication of all references to the Crimean Tatars.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Soviet regime’s deportation of the Crimean Tatar people from the Crimean Peninsula. In 2015, Ukraine, in 2019 Latvia, and Lithuania, and in 2022 Canada, all recognized the deportation as an act of genocide against the Crimean Tatar people. In May, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine reached out to the governments and parliaments of foreign countries, international organizations, and parliamentary assemblies, requesting recognition of the 1944 deportation as an act of genocide against the Crimean Tatar people.