Saturday, July 08, 2006

Dimwits at Gazeta.ru quoted what dimwits at ITAR-TASS wrote about Crimean Tatars at 11 am today:

About half a thousand people were involved in a mass fight in Bahcesaray today. To prevent bloodshed, a special unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Berkut, was summoned, said a Crimean law enforcement official.

The fight broke out because the Crimean Tatar diaspora decided to keep Russians and Ukrainians from trading at the local market.


Diaspora, my ass.

Here's a quick Wikipedia reference on Bahcesaray:

Bakhchisaray, first mentioned 1502, was established as the new khan residence by the Crimean khan Sahib I Giray in 1532. Since then, it was the capital of the Crimean Khanate and the center of political and cultural life of the Crimean Tatar people. After occupation of the Crimean Khanate by the Russian Empire in 1783, it was turned in an ordinary town, having lost administrative significance. However, it remained the cultural center of the Crimean Tatars until the "Surgun" (deportation on 18 May 1944).


There is a huge Azeri diaspora in Moscow, of course, and they do run many markets, and part of their business strategy is to keep the locals from selling stuff at these markets. This is just one of the reasons why they are disliked in the Russian capital: Muslim hordes invade the markets and chase Slavic babushkas away.

At 7 pm, Crimean Tatars were upgraded to "local residents" - by Interfax this time - and the Azeri scheme was given up:

[...]

As was reported earlier, a confrontation between vendors of the central market and local residents - the Crimean Tatars - grew into a mass fight. The cause of the conflict was that the market's owners began construction work in a reserve zone near an ancient Crimean Tatar mausoleum. Crimean Tatars have been demanding to shut the market for a long time and they went to court to solve this issue. Several hearings took place, but the final decision haven't been made yet.

1 comment:

  1. This is off of the point, but Sergei Gontchar of Ukraine has won the time trial stage Saturday and taken the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. That's kind of big. He will have it now probably for several days. I think it is a first for Ukraine, both yellow jersey and the stage win. I could be wrong about the stage win.

    ReplyDelete