Resist or cooperate? Crimean Tatars split over Russian rule

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By Alexander Winning BAKHCHISARAY, Crimea (Reuters) - Seventy years after their families' mass deportation under Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the Crimean Tatars are in a quandary: should they cooperate with their homeland's new Russian authorities or resist them? Some Tatars - Sunni Muslims of Turkic origin - fear a return to Stalinist repression despite official promises to respect their rights and freedoms; If we don't adopt a unified approach, we risk splitting ourselves up and being marginalized,\" said Nariman Dzhelyalov, deputy chairman of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatars' main representative body. The Tatars, who make up more than 12 percent of Crimea's largely ethnic Russian population of about 2 million, are among the most vociferous critics of Moscow's annexation in March of the peninsula previously governed by Ukraine.




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