On 18 May 2018, the Evening Requiem on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Crimean Tatars Genocide, organized with the participation of the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine, was held on Sofiyska Square.
“Seventy five years less one separate us from that tragic event. Witnesses pass away, but the Moscow-perpetrated genocide of the Crimean Tatar people remains in the historical memory of Crimean Tatars – and in the memory of the entire Ukrainian people! That forced deportation was one of the most wrongful and brutal operations of the totalitarian communal Moscow regime,” President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine said in his speech.
The head of state recalled that this year sees the 85th anniversary of Holodomor and 80 years since the Great Terror, adding that the Ukrainian people knows better than the others what it means to be stamped to death by the Kremlin Empire. “The pain of Crimean Tatars is the pain of all Ukrainians,” the President stressed.
He added that the right for Crimean Tatars to freely live on their native land shall be restored.
“The Crimean Tatar genocide, unleashed by the Stalin regime in 1994 under the cover of deportation, is a crime comparable in scale to Holodomor, Holocaust and other scourges of mankind, when entire peoples were under the threat of complete elimination. But the terrible tragedy that Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars lived through serve as a factor of unity, an important element of shaping the Ukrainian political nation,” the Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine, Yuriy Stets, was quoted as saying.
Within the framework of the event, a requiem concert, a mourning rally and the screening of the feature film Haitarma took place.
Earlier, on May 15th, the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine had presented the national communication campaign on the occasion of May 18th, the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Crimean Tatars Genocide.