Dutch parliament recognises Crimean Tatar deportation as genocide
A look back at 20 June 2025, when the Netherlands acted on the 1944 deportation, days after Ukraine's parliament moved on dual citizenship.
What did the parliament of the Netherlands decide on 20 June 2025? It recognised the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, carried out by the Soviet Union in 1944, as genocide.
The deportation, known as the Sürgünlik ("exile"), took place from 18 to 20 May 1944. According to the background to these events, at least 191,044 Crimean Tatars were deported by Soviet authorities. The operation was supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, chief of Soviet state security and the secret police, and ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Within those three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to move the Crimean Tatars from Crimea to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. Even Soviet Communist Party members and Red Army soldiers were among those deported. The Crimean Tatars were one of several ethnic groups subjected to Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.
A separate move in Kyiv
Two days before the Dutch vote, on 18 June 2025, the parliament of Ukraine approved a law allowing multiple citizenship for Ukrainians. As reported at the time, the measure was an attempt to ease a demographic crisis caused by the Russian invasion.
The two decisions concerned different matters and were taken in different parliaments. Together they marked the days around 20 June 2025 as a moment of legislative action on questions of Ukrainian history and Ukraine's present.
