Who Are the “Crimea People” or “People of Crimea”? The Fate of the Crimean Tatars, Russia’s Legal Justification for Annexation, and Pandora’s Box

Abstract

This chapter does not seek to add to the already voluminous literature on the legality of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. I agree with the many international organisations and scholars of international law who have insisted that the annexation was illegal in international law. I focus on the “Legal arguments for Russia’s position on Crimea and Ukraine” published by the Permanent Delegation of the Russian Federation to UNESCO on 7 November 2014. This official document asserted that there had been “…the implementation of the right to self-determination by the people of Crimea”. It is my contention that there is only one people with a right to self-determination in Crimea, namely the Crimean Tatar People, who assert the right to recognition as the main indigenous people of Crimea. First, I briefly describe the events of 2014–15. Next I turn to the origins and history of the Crimean Tatars in Crimea, including their fate in the first Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783. Third, drawing on my own experience from the 1990s onwards, I explain the difficulties faced by the Crimean Tatars in Ukraine, from their return from exile in Central Asia in the late 1980s, and in independent Ukraine from 1991, until the second annexation by Russia in 2014. Fourth, I turn to the question of the proper status of the Crimean Tatars in international law. Fifth, I return to the official position of Russia, and sixth to the analyses, consistent with the official Russian justification, of three leading Russian scholars.