(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The term "Potemkin's backdrop" originated from the Russian tsarina Katarina's inspection trip to the newly conquered Crimea in 1778. First-time lover and prince Gregory Potemkin, according to the myth, set off scenery of affluent villages to give the conqueror the right impression, and cover a reality of corruption, oppression and distress.
The story repeats itself in the February issue of Ny Tid, with Bjørn Nistad in the role of set designer ("Crimea is Russian") and the business couple Hendrik and Mette Rosenlund as visiting conquerors ("Seven days in Crimea").
Putin's backdrop, which Nistad promotes, is that "almost everyone in Crimea, including the Crimean Tatars, supports the reunification with Russia and that people look bright for the future." Nistad urges Norwegian politicians and ordinary citizens to travel to occupied Crimea in order to support the scene by themselves. The Rosenlund couple have already taken the call and are excited about a week's journey in Crimea in the autumn of 2016.
Nistad's academic title and book publications will ensure that he is an objective observer of Putin's Russia. In reality, he is a partisan player on behalf of the Putin regime. He does not mention that such trips to Crimea itself involve violating Ukrainian sovereignty and participating in an unlawful occupation. Known in style, Nistad recounts conversations with a meticulous bunch of supporters of the Russian occupation during a visit in the fall of 2015, while professing the principled and strong opposition to the occupation.
Quisling. Nistad interviews "Crimean Tatar human rights activist" Vasvi Abduraimov, who supports Russian supremacy. Abduraimov leads the pro-Russian party Milli Firqa – The National Party. Milli Firqa is notorious as pro-Russian underuse, and claims the place of the Crimean Tatar People's Assembly Kurultajen and its government Meilzen, which was banned under Russian extremism legislation in April 2016. With his media propaganda against the legitimate Crimean Tatar leaders in line with Russian propaganda, Abdup helps to give the persecution of Crimean Tatar and pro-Ukrainian activists a semblance of legitimacy. From a Crimean Tatar perspective, it is natural to compare Milli Firqa with our own NS during the German occupation, and consider Abduraimov a Quisling.
The Crimean Tatar World Congress numbered nine killed in the summer of 2016, 15 kidnapped and disappeared, and 25 arrested as political prisoners since the Russian invasion in February – March 2014. The persecution has hardened further beyond the fall and winter. In Crimea, there are now regular raids of large numbers of armed and masked soldiers against homes and families of Crimean Tatar activists, on a random basis. During the fall of 2016, the regime also went to arrest the lawyers of the arrested. The latest is mass arrests of neighbors and friends who show up to show their support to the victims of raids and arrests. The Crimean Tatar TV channel ATR was closed in Crimea as early as April 2015, depriving it of the opportunity to cover this development. Some documentation is still leaked online thanks to modern mobile technology and the internet.
Resistance to the occupation. The American polling institute Pew Research Center is part of the scenery Nistad is traveling. Their staff marched around Crimea in the weeks after 30 masked Russian soldiers without insignia terrorized the local population, faithfully examining the population's views on the referendum and Russia's annexation. Nistad can cite the results of the survey as evidence that the referendum and the Russian annexation were allegedly in line with popular opinion on the peninsula: 000 percent of those polled in Crimea considered the referendum on March 91, 16 fair, and 2014 percent thought the Kiev government should recognize it.
Nistad praises Aftenposten journalist Per Kristian Aale's award-winning digging journalism on how voting fraud and brutal political fraud were the basis of the Simferopol parliament's decision to hold the referendum. The referendum also lacked legal grounds, both under Ukrainian law and international law. It was rejected as unconstitutional by the Ukrainian Supreme Court just before it was held. It sets an impossible precedent internationally, that it is up to an arbitrary majority of the population at any time to decide which state power they should belong to. The referendum lacked legitimacy, and thus also international independent observers. However, the messages are numerous about extensive electoral fraud, by arbitrary lists where traveling Russians were given the opportunity to vote, and organized transport of voting cattle from polling station to polling station. The electoral turnout in the Sevastopol region was as much as 123 percent.
There is reason to ask whether the conditions for free opinion were present when the American opinion poll was conducted on the Crimean peninsula. The result reflects the impact of a massive propaganda push around the so-called referendum in combination with the presence of armed Russian masked militia, and a number of cases of arbitrary violence, abductions, torture and killings on opponents of the occupation. The opinion poll also reflects that the population of the peninsula after centuries of persecution of Crimean Tatars and Stalin's deportation in 1944 is predominantly Russia-oriented. At the same time, the opinion poll shows that the minority of Crimean Tatars in the peninsula of about 10 per cent, after all, remained unison in their opposition to the occupation – contrary to Nistad's claim.
The myth building around and the backdrop of the occupied Crimean peninsula are central to the Putin dictatorship.
Opinion Terror. The legendary, non-violent and real Crimean Tatar human rights activist and leader Mustafa Dzhemilev, previously interviewed by Truls Lie in Ny Tid, points out in a recent interview that everyone you meet on the streets of Crimea will defend the Russian occupation if they receive direct questions from outsiders. It is connected with, Dzhemilev explains, that according to Russian extremism legislation it is illegal and can have rental consequences to challenge the claim, which Nistad advocates, that "Crimea is Russian". Behind the scenes hides an increasingly brutal Russian dictatorship with terror of opinion.
The myth building around and the backdrop of the occupied Crimean peninsula are central to this Putin dictatorship. If the occupied Crimea falls, the Putin regime probably also falls. That is why it is so crucial to the Putin regime that many follow Nistad's call and the Rosenlund couple's example, and as Catherine goes to the Promised Land to be dazzled and seduced. As Catherine needed the Crimean Peninsula to fortify Russia as a westward bulwark against the Ottoman Empire, the Rosenlund couple, as concrete contractors from the Stavanger region in crisis, also have a certain self-interest in closing their eyes and confusing the scenes with reality. That is Putin's profitable hope.
