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Crimean Tatar public organization supports protesters in southeast Ukraine

SIMFEROPOL, April 11. /ITAR-TASS/. A public organization of Crimean Tatars on Friday expressed support for protesters in southeastern Ukraine.

The organization’s members said that after the seizure of power in Kiev, “those who yesterday shouted from the Maidan rostrum that it is inadmissible to spill the blood of peaceful protesters are ready today to cover the entire southeast of Ukraine with the blood of peaceful nationals."

Seydamet Gemedzhi, a board member of the Sebat (Endurance) public organization that unites over 50,000 Crimean Tatars, told ITAR-TASS on Thursday that they are “ready not only to express support verbally” but also have already started taking “specific actions”.

“I can’t yet speak of them, but we have already started working,” Gemedzhi said.

He said “Ukraine’s southeast supports President Viktor Yanukovych as we do. What happened in Kiev is a real state coup We can’t stay aside when our brothers-in-spirit have found themselves in such a situation”.

Sebat is an organization which is in opposition to representatives of the Majlis of the Crimean Tatar people. An address posted on its website says that “the population of the southeast (of Ukraine) justly demands holding a referendum on federalization, freedom in managing their resources, giving their language the status of a state one and release of all arrested activists”.

“No one has doubts today that a junta seized power in Ukraine. The junta does not hear the Southeast, cracks down on protests with the hands of armed radicals and mercenaries of Western private military companies,” the statement says.

The political and economic situation in Ukraine is far from stable following a coup that occurred in the country in February after months of anti-government protests triggered by Kiev’s decision to suspend an association agreement with the EU in November 2013 in favor of closer ties with Russia.