Today, May 18th, the anniversary of the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars (Qirimlar), the indigenous population of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine, is commemorated. On 18-20 May 1944, the whole nation of around 200,000 Crimean Tatars was forcibly deported to Central Asia, mostly to Uzbekistan by the Soviet regime. Nearly 8,000 of them died during the deportation and tens of thousands perished subsequently in the exile due to harsh conditions.