On Saturday 3 May, Mustafa Jemilev was denied access to his native land, Crimea, by local Russian authorities when attempting to reach the peninsula through a mainland checkpoint between Crimea and Ukraine. At the border Mr. Jemilev was stopped by an impressive military deployment, with two cordons of militaries, vehicles full of soldiers, and snipers disseminated around the perimeter. This incident follows another attempt by the symbolic Crimean Tatar leader to reach Crimea by plane on Friday 2 May, whereby customs officials in Moscow prevented him from boarding a Simferopol flight. To recall, on 22 April after a visit to Crimea, Mr. Jemilev was handed a document barring him from entering Crimea for a period of five years (until 2019) for criticising the peninsula’s annexation by Russia.

One of the founders of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, the single highest executive-representative body of the Crimean Tatars, Mr. Jemilev has devoted his career to the restoration and promotion of the rights and fundamental freedoms of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people through strictly peaceful means.  A solidarity rally of more than 5,000 Crimean Tatars this Saturday 3 May at the border of the Crimean peninsula bears witness of the respect and recognition Mr. Jemilev enjoys on part of his people.

Alongside these developments, Head of the Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, was handed a ‘warning’ by Crimean Chief Prosecutor, Natalya Poklonskaya, on Sunday 4 May. In a statement addressed to Mr. Chubarov, she accused him of spurring interethnic tensions and unrest in Crimea on 3 May. On Mr. Chubarov's request to communicate with him in Crimean Tatar, which is one of three official languages in Crimea, Ms. Poklonskaya did not respond. Further in the statement, she threatened to “liquidate the Mejlis” in case such events would repeat. Two weeks earlier, on 21 April, the Mejlis administrative building was vandalised by unidentified men in camouflage who took down the Ukrainian flag and physically assaulted officials working in the building.

Following these unjustifiable events, chances of building a meaningful dialogue between the Kremlin and the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People are progressively fading away. The current situation raises serious concerns among the Crimean Tatars, who since the outbreak of the Crimean crisis, have expressed fears of a repetition of the historic injustice that took place under Stalin’s rule, when Crimean Tatars were deported en masse from their homeland. At a press conference in Kiev on 5 May, Mr. Jemilev stated that he is not ruling out a crackdown of mourning events to commemorate the 1944 deportation, scheduled for 18 May.