The practice of completely eradicating the Ukrainian language from the school curriculum of the occupied Crimea, which CEMAAT described last week, is being actively extended to the teaching of the Crimean Tatar language. The only difference is that for the small indigenous people, such a policy of the occupiers threatens with much greater losses. We learned how much the teaching of the Crimean Tatar language has decreased since the beginning of the occupation, and how teachers and school principals are being forced to push the Crimean Tatar language out of the education system.

Formally, there are 15 schools in Crimea that have been teaching in the Crimean Tatar language since the annexation. According to the Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis Ilmi Umerov, there are no such institutions on the peninsula, as none of the schools teach in Crimean Tatar, and the language is taught as a foreign language at best.

“Lessons that should be taught in Crimean Tatar are mostly taught in Russian. The schedule is in Russian. Everyday communication is in Russian. Teachers are forbidden to speak their native Crimean Tatar language outside of class. Symbols and flags are only Russian. I appealed to the school principal several times, pointing out that these are gross violations. But they made it clear to me that nothing would change, and other schools don't even have this,” a father of a schoolgirl in Bilohirsk district tells CEMAAT.

Another method was to reduce the number of classes taught in Crimean Tatar in specialized schools. “We came to apply to the school, and they told us that the Crimean Tatar language classes are already full, you will sit on top of each other's heads, go to a Russian class, there will be no difference. Why are they opening Russian classes in Crimean Tatar schools? If you want to study in Russian, there are plenty of other schools around!” the mother of a student of one of these schools in Bakhchisaray district is indignant.

Her words are confirmed in a report by Crimean propagandists from the “exemplary” Crimean Tatar school No. 42 in Simferopol. Already in 2017, half of the primary school classes there were taught in Russian. This is in a school that the occupation Ministry of Education positions as a Crimean Tatar-language school. In peripheral schools, the situation is even worse.

Compared to pre-occupation times, the number of students in Crimean Tatar schools has increased by about two thousand, but the number of schools has remained unchanged. The shortage of places forces parents to send their children to Russian schools. Even the occupation authorities recognized this problem in 2020. Kremlin-controlled Head of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov said on the Crimean Tatar propaganda TV channel Millet that it was planned to build six more schools in the areas with the largest number of applications for teaching children in the Crimean Tatar language. “A school for 600 children will be built in Bakhchisarai, a school for 480 children in Ismail Bay, and four more schools will be built in Simferopol and Simferopol district,” Aksyonov said, without specifying when these projects are planned to start and be completed. Four years later, not even the start of construction work has been recorded in any of the above regions.

The situation with Crimean Tatar classes in regular schools is similar. According to the occupation Ministry of Education, last year there were 119 classes in twenty-one schools on the peninsula with instruction in the Crimean Tatar language. In 2014, there were 384 such classes in forty schools.

This reduction (despite the growing number of people willing to teach children in their native language) was achieved in several ways. Firstly, contrary to propaganda reports about the publication of huge editions of textbooks in the Crimean Tatar language, according to UNESCO, the need for educational literature in the language of the indigenous people is currently only 37 percent covered. And often the principal with a clear conscience tells parents that he would be happy to open a Crimean Tatar class, but there are no textbooks and will not be for a long time, if ever.

The second trick is even simpler: money. “The salaries are very low, and there are no incentive payments in schools with a different language of instruction, so teachers just leave. Here we have Bilohirsk School No. 4 nearby, and it lacks a number of teachers,” human rights activist Abdureshit Dzhepparov emphasized back in 2019. He also drew attention to a key problem: applications to open Crimean Tatar classes are met with tremendous resistance in the administrations of educational institutions:

“Teachers, head teachers, principals refuse, blackmail, scare and prove in every possible way that it will be low-quality education,” Dzhepparov said in an interview with a Ukrainian publication.

Other participants in educational relations also speak of illegal but obvious resistance. “Theoretically, any school should open a Crimean Tatar class if there is a sufficient number of applicants. But in reality, we constantly face serious and clearly systemic opposition from school administrations,” shared their observations lawyers of the Areket initiative, who help protect the right to receive education in their native language.

As a typical example, human rights activists cite the story of a school in the village of Tsvitochne, Bilohirsk district, where eleven parents demanded that the school principal, Yelena Menzheleyeva, open a Crimean Tatar class, and she tried in every way to evade it. The principal refused to accept the applications, citing the fact that the school had no free classes, no teacher, and no educational and methodological literature. In informal conversations, she resorted to psychological pressure, threats and manipulation, convincing them that the Crimean Tatar language was difficult, that it would not be useful in their professional activities, and that the state language was Russian, and that state exams should be taken in Russian.

But the story of the struggle to open a Crimean Tatar class in Simferopol's school No. 37 gained the most resonance when, in response to a request from parents, the school's director, Diana Rysovana, said: “Who are you? You, Tatars, are nobody here! That's all. There will be no Crimean Tatar class”. The Ministry of Education responded that they were not obliged to open the class (although they are required by law), and the police responded to the extremist complaint by saying that it was all the parents' imagination, and that the principal was not even at work that day. This is the best illustration of how “equal” all languages are in Crimea, especially in the school system.

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