(18 May 2016) Hundreds of people gathered in Kiev city centre on Wednesday as Crimean Tatars marked the 72nd anniversary of their deportation from the peninsula by former Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
In the space of three days in May 1944, all 200,000 Tatars, who then made up a third of Crimea's population, were put on trains and shipped off to Central Asia on Stalin's orders, suspected of collaborating with the Nazis during their long occupation of the peninsula during the war.
Thousands died during the gruelling journey, or starved to death upon their arrival.
In the decades after the war, the Soviet Union developed Crimea as a naval base and a tourist destination, dominated by ethnic Russians along with Ukrainians.
It was not until the 1980s that the Tatars were allowed to return to their native land.
Since that time, Crimean Tatars commemorate the victims of deportation every May. and gather together to remember the days when thousands of their compatriots were forced to leave their homes for decades.
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