Meanwhile, the community itself has been whiplashed by fear, anxiety and threats of violence. In the weeks leading up to the referendum, small etched marks — in the form of X’s or crosses — appeared on exterior walls and metal gates of several Tatar homes in Bakhchisaray. No one has taken responsibility for them, but for most Tatars, the marks — now painted over or sanded off — were searing reminders of what happened in 1944, when Soviet secret police marked homes to distinguish Tatars from Russians before the mass deportations began.
On March 3, Reshat Ametov, a Tatar laborer who lived in Simferopol with his wife and three young children, disappeared after being seen led from a Simferopol protest by unknown men wearing camouflage jackets. Ametov’s body turned up 13 days later in the mixed ethnic community of Belogorsk.
Teifuk Gafarov, a lawyer who was the first Tatar representative to identify the body as it lay in a Belogorsk morgue, said the body had signs of torture on it. Local media said Ametov’s hands and feet had been bound with plastic tape, though Gafarov said he hadn’t been able to confirm that.
Ametov’s killing, and the sudden presence of heavily armed masked Russian soldiers and local paramilitary “self-defense” forces, prompted Tatars to form their own patrols and set up checkpoints in Bakhchisaray and other villages around the peninsula.