Defiant Crimeans Nourish Culture In Russia-Forced Emigration

In Lviv, western Ukraine, a group of displaced Crimean Tatars have started the process of developing modern Crimean Tatar culture outside of the occupied peninsula. A music producer from Simferopol, Halil Halilov, has started up a music production studio for Crimean Tatar artists, artists using Crimean Tatar themes and developing young Crimean Tatar musical talent.

"I came to realize that cultural development was being affected," said Halil.

"My responsibility... I feel my share of responsibility in being able to develop the culture outside of Crimea"

Halil has also been active in schools, where new Crimean Tatar artists can develop their talents and contribute to the growing Tatar musical culture.

"What I might do on the grounds of this Jazz School is to modernize the Crimean Tatar music," Halil said while giving a tour of the music school studio.

As at the 23 March 2015 the UN estimated that there are 1,178,000 IDPs in Ukraine. For several months a team of Hromadske journalists traveled around Ukraine, from Sloviansk to Lviv, in search of stories of those who were left without their homes because of the war and the annexation. This the third story of part 2 in the Displaced series, a project about the lives of internally displaced persons in Ukraine from the Donbas region and Crimea.

// Hromadske with the support of the Thomson Foundation. Filmed in March, 2015.