YALTA, Ukraine, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- The leader of the Crimean Tatars has publicly opposed setting up a monument in Yalta that would include Josef Stalin, Interfax-Ukraine reported Wednesday.
Mustafa Dzhemilev, the speaker of the Crimean Tatar Parliament and member of the Our Ukraine political party, denounced the idea of a monument commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Yalta Conference at Livadia Palace. The monument would include likenesses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Stalin, the participants in the February 1945 summit.
"If one recalls all the crimes committed by Stalin and his regime against Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, one will understand that monuments to Stalin must not appear today, especially in the homeland of the Crimean Tatars who were displaced by Stalin in 1944," Dzhemilev said.
During World War II, the Crimean Tatars were accused of being Nazi collaborators and were deported to Central Asia and other distant parts of the Soviet Union. More than 46 percent of the population died of disease or malnutrition. Today more than 250,000 Crimean Tatars have returned to the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea.
