18 May 2025
(Photo: Intent/Eugenia Genova)
Crimean Tatar artist Aziza Eskender and theater director and activist Galina Dzhikayeva organized an action in the center of Odesa to mark the anniversary of the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944, which was accompanied by a performance.
According to an Int'l correspondent, the performance consisted of Aziza Eskender writing the names of Crimean Tatar activists imprisoned by Russians after the occupation of Crimea in 2014 on the pavement, and Galina Dzhikayeva writing meaningful words on paper, such as Crimea, Courage, Honor.
The papers were pressed to the pavement of Deribasovskaya Street with stones from Crimea.
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars was a genocide that included the forced expulsion of the Crimean Tatar people, mostly women and children, from their historical homeland, Crimea, carried out on May 18-21, 1944. It was one of the crimes of the Soviet totalitarian regime. During the deportation and in the first years after it, from 27%, according to the NKVD, to 46.2% of the deportees, or from one third to about half of the people, died.
On April 22, a chamber concert by Crimean Tatar artist Aziza Eskender was held in Odesa. The event had a charitable purpose - to raise funds for electronic warfare equipment for the South Air Command. The concert program included original songs performed in Ukrainian, English and Crimean Tatar. The performance also included a poem by a Uyghur poet who was tortured in China.
The initiative was implemented in cooperation with the Come Back Alive Foundation and the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
On the anniversary of the deportation of Tatars from Crimea on May 18, 2023, Intent spoke with theater director and activist Halyna Dzhykayeva, who was the founder of an underground theater in Simferopol and moved to Kyiv after the occupation of Crimea began. In the interview, she spoke about contemporary culture in Crimea before 2014, the February resistance of Crimeans, the Sentsov case and persecution by the Russian FSB, as well as her artistic and volunteer activities in Kyiv and Odesa.
Кирило Бойко