Parubiy promised to send Mejlis members back to Crimea
The Verkhovna Rada today began its meeting with a minute of silence in memory of the victims during the deportation of part of the population of Crimea to Central Asia on charges of collaboration during the Great Patriotic War.
"Dear colleagues, on Saturday and Sunday, Ukraine will commemorate two tragic dates for our people. Two terrible wounds left by the Russian communist colonial regime. Saturday, May 18, marks 75 years since Stalin's criminal order to deport the Crimean Tatars from their land—Ukrainian Crimea. This was effectively an order of genocide, the extermination of an entire people," declared Speaker Andriy Parubiy, according to a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Parubiy promised that the Mejlis members who fled from Crimea would return to the peninsula.
“Dear compatriots, I am sure that we will return Crimea, and you will return home forever. Dear colleagues, I urge you to remember this Sunday also all the tortured martyrs, victims of political repression. And for those who are campaigning for the revival of the Soviet Empire, I advise you to visit the Bykovnyansky forest near Kyiv on this day to see with your own eyes the bloody execution site where thousands of victims of Bolshevik crimes against humanity are buried. We will not forget and we will not forgive, never,” said the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament.
Parubiy promised to send the Mejlis members back to Crimea.