Foreign Affairs Committee on May 16th, 2019

[Mustafa Dzhemilev]

[Witness spoke in Russian, interpreted as follows:]

On the Crimean peninsula, Russia's not interested in the economic situation there. The Crimean peninsula is being fully funded by the budget of the Russian Federation, and Russian economists are saying that the annual upkeep of Crimea will cost from $3 billion to $5 billion, but I think this includes some military expenditures as well.

As far as business and the economic situation goes, I guess you can judge the well-being of any country or region by its trade. When Crimea was controlled by Ukraine, the trade turnover was about $3 billion. In 2017, the trade turnover was about $200 million. They traded with Syria, with Assad's regime; with Armenia; with those countries that do recognize the occupation. Of course, business activities have decreased sharply.

In addition to that, many companies just close their doors. Those who came to power raided and took control over other businesses. In order to do business in Crimea, you can't be just a businessman. You can't not be implicated in politics. Every day you would have to demonstrate how loyal you are to the regime. You have to proclaim how great it is to be within Russia, that Putin is great, and then you can have some hope that your business will do well, but Crimean Tatars do not know how to say those things, and of course we were the first to lose our businesses.

Overall, business activity on the whole has gone down, but the Russian Federation does not care about that. What they most care about is Crimea as a military bridgehead.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That's actually the point I wanted to get to. When Crimea was annexed, one of the understandings was that there would be greater Russian investment in Crimea, but because of the sanctions and because of the economic situation in Russia right now, especially with the drop of oil prices and the sanctions they have incurred, it seems that now there's less investment in Crimea. However, the ethnic Russian population still has a majority there. They must be suffering under these conditions also.

Has there been no outcry from them at all with this situation?

[Mustafa Dzhemilev]

[Witness spoke in Russian, interpreted as follows:]

There have been outcries from people, and they have been kidnapped or murdered or jailed, and they cannot raise an outcry from there.

Russians in all their speeches are saying proudly that all the citizens who live in Crimea have Russian passports and that nobody is protesting. Indeed, that is true. Everybody has the Russian passport, because if you don't have one, you cannot get a job, you cannot get education for your children, and you can't even get health care. If you went to the hospital, the first thing you'd be asked for is your passport. If you don't have a passport, you might as well just die there.

As far as the outcry goes, even those who supported the occupation but were hoping to speak out at the protests and defend their rights, as they could when Ukraine was in control, are also suffering repression. They are being beaten up.

I have seen Crimean Kazakhs on YouTube who were defending their rights. They were picketing with some demands at a building, and they were being beaten up. They were shouting, “Hey, we are Russians. Why are you beating us up? We're not Crimean Tatars.” So even those people who support the occupying state are also being repressed.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

What the Russians have tried to do over the last four or five years is set up parallel organizations or co-opt existing organizations such as the Mejlis, which they banned. Alternatively, they have set up clone organizations to try to infiltrate Crimean organizations.

How effective has that been over the last four or five years?

[Mustafa Dzhemilev]

[Witness spoke in Russian, interpreted as follows:]

Of course, the Mejlis is very important for them. Back in 2011, we saw instructions for the FSB, which said that the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people was the greatest obstacle in implementing the strategic interests of Russia in Crimea. It didn't say what the strategic interests were, but it did say that we were an obstacle to achieving them. There was quite an ambitious plan outlined to infiltrate the leadership of the Mejlis with pro-Russian people, and so on. It was not realistic, but that was the plan.

After the occupation, there was an attempt to bribe the Mejlis, getting them to accept the Russian occupation. That failed, so they started with repressions. They banned me from entering Crimea. The president of the Mejlis can no longer enter the peninsula. Two other people have been arrested, and so on. They managed to take over the spiritual administration of the Muslims of Crimea. That administration is no longer respected by the Crimean Tatars, because they listened to the FSB.

They are setting up children's and women's organizations. They are financing them, and membership in those organizations is pretty much the same. They are trying to show that the Crimean Tatars are remaining politically active, and that these activities are in support of Putin's regime.

They have not been successful in doing the same with the Mejlis, and they will not succeed. The Russian legislation does not include laws allowing them to conduct Mejlis elections, and even if they managed to do it, the Crimean Tatars would not vote in them. That's why they cannot tell the court in The Hague why they're not lifting the ban on the Mejlis. They have no answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you.

For the final question, we'll now move to MP O'Toole, please.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Mr. Dzhemilev. I'd like to echo the comments of the chair and my colleagues in welcoming you and thanking you for being here, particularly for the 75th anniversary. I'd also like to thank you personally for your leadership and strong resolve for your people for decades. It's greatly admired.

I first became aware of the modern struggles the Crimean Tatars faced in Crimea with the aggression of the Putin regime through the work of Dr. Andrew Bennett. You may recall that he was Canada's ambassador for religious freedom. I know he travelled to Kiev. There were some investments in the religious freedom fund, and you collaborated with him on a few occasions, both in Ukraine and in Canada.

Can you talk a little about the work Dr. Bennett did, and whether you saw that work as a positive factor in raising awareness about the Crimean Tatars?

[Mustafa Dzhemilev]

[Witness spoke in Russian, interpreted as follows:]

I am afraid I do not have enough information to be able to answer, but I can say that we're well aware that Canada has been doing a lot for many years, working on various projects to support us and Ukraine. We're very grateful.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Is there anything else we could be doing? Ambassador, if you'd like—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Go ahead, please, Ambassador.

[His Excellency Andriy Shevchenko, Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada]

Extraordinary work was done by Ambassador Bennett and by many other Canadians who travelled to Ukraine in the last five years to try to learn about the situation.

It was also very important that Ambassador Bennett studied not just the repression of the Crimean Tatars but also other human rights violations that occurred in occupied Crimea. We are talking about repression of the followers of the Ukrainian church and of representatives of different ethnic groups.

I think by now the international community has a very clear picture of these massive human rights violations in the occupied territories, which include both Crimea and the part of Donbass that is occupied by the Russians. Again, we are thankful to those friends of Ukraine who spent their time exploring the situation in Ukraine and other places around the world.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you very much, Ambassador.

In that vein, that office was, as you may know, wound down in 2016 by this government and replaced with the office of human rights, with a much larger budget. I'm wondering whether there's been any specific work from that office as part of Global Affairs in supporting the Tatars in Ukraine.

Do you have any thoughts on what more we could do? We talked about Magnitsky sanctions. Obviously there's political support for that. Is there more we could be doing? Specifically, do you have any insight on work from the office of human rights in the last two years?

[Andriy Shevchenko]

I'll just say that I think in that sense, Ukrainians were privileged to enjoy this very strong, multi-party consensus that we see in Canada on the issue of Ukraine and the Russian occupation.

Again, I think we are very privileged to see this very strong co-operation across the aisle, and we really hope that it will stay that way and that different authorities and institutions of the Canadian government will be able to do what they have to do.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your visit. We look forward to working with you in the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

As this session is now coming to a close, I want to thank our two guests, Mustafa Dzhemilev and Akhtem Chyigoz. It's so important that we had you here today, along with Ambassador Shevchenko. Support for Ukraine among Canadian parliamentarians, the government, the Canadian people across the country is something we really want to uphold. After hearing the plight of the Tatars today, it is incredibly important to keep this front of mind.

I want to again acknowledge MP Wrzesnewskyj's motion that's going to be before the House and say that we will make sure your plight—the repression that you are feeling from the Russian aggression and the denial of human rights, political rights, religious rights—will not be forgotten and will be brought to the attention of the Canadian people.

I want to thank everybody who has attended here today.

With that, we shall adjourn.