For Lia Gazi, a 24-year-old Crimean Tatar activist in exile, the second half of May each year signifies both personal and collective tragedy—marking the forced deportation and genocide of the Crimean Tatar people that began 82 years ago this week.
Over two days in 1944, from May 18 to May 20, the Soviet secret police forcibly deported over 190,000 indigenous Crimean Tatars across thousands of kilometers from Crimea to Central Asia. An estimated 8,000 died in the process. Members of Gazi's family were among the victims.
"Strangers still live in our homes today, and the scariest thing is that the impunity surrounding these crimes allows them to happen again and again," Gazi told the Kyiv Independent.
The deportation was carried out under direct orders from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who labeled the entire Crimean Tatar population as traitors following the peninsula's liberation from Nazi occupation. Families were given minutes to gather belongings before being loaded onto cattle cars for the brutal journey eastward.
Decades have passed since Gazi's ancestors were deported, and now history appears to be repeating itself. In Crimea, occupied by Russia since 2014, and other occupied territories, Crimean Tatars face political repression, persecution, and erasure of their identity and history.
"In Crimea, you can't even mention it out loud," Gazi said, referring to commemoration of the 1944 deportation. Russian occupation authorities have banned public remembrance events, arrested activists, and systematically dismantled Crimean Tatar cultural institutions.
In Ukraine, as across nations defending their sovereignty, resilience is not just survival—it's determination to build a better future. For Crimean Tatars, that resilience means preserving collective memory despite systematic efforts to erase it.
