A legal analysis of the Crimean Tatar Deportation of 1944

Abstract

Over the past decade, Crimean Tatars started to express more robustly their requests for the international recognition of the 1944 Mass Deportation as the crime of genocide. While it can be said, even prima facie, that the 1944 Deportation falls under the scope of the current definition of crimes against humanity, making a similar kind of claim with the same immediateness is unlikely in terms of the crime of genocide owing to the narrowly constructed legal definition. Moreover, the principle of non-retroactivity of laws poses a further challenge in the consideration of both genocide and crimes against humanity. This paper will try to answer two interconnected questions: Is it a legally plausible case to characterize the 1944 Deportation as genocide or crimes against humanity? And, are there any differences between the legal characterization of 1944 Deportation as genocide or crimes against humanity in terms of their possible consequences?

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