SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine
Crimea’s Tatars, who reject the peninsula’s annexation to Russia, expect to vote in Sunday’s elections to choose Ukraine’s new president.
“About 6,000 Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians who reside in Crimea have registered with the election body to vote,” Iskender Bariev of the Crimean Tatars’ self-governing congress told Anadolu Agency Wednesday.
The southern Ukrainian province of Kherson is set to be the location for polling stations for the presidential election according to Bariev.
Bariev said it was very likely that Crimea’s new authorities would try to block them from voting, but “if that happens, we will stage a demonstration on the border crossing into Kherson to draw the attention of international community."
Crimea’s 300,000 strong Tatar population boycotted the March 16 referendum that saw the region vote for unification with Russia.
The Soviet Union under Stalin forcibly deported Crimean Tatars from Crimea in 1944 as a form of collective punishment for alleged collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.
Over 230,000 people were deported, mainly to Uzbekistan, including the entire, ethnic Crimean Tatar population as well as a small number of ethnic Greeks and Bulgarians. A large number of deportees died from starvation or disease as a direct result of deportation.
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