<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Crimean ethnic groups. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Media reports acknowledge that 83.1 percent of eligible Crimean voters cast their ballot in the March 16th referendum. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The final tally of the vote was 96.77 percent in favor of joining the Russian Federation, and 2.51 percent against.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The Western media has underscored that both the Crimean Tatars as well as the Ukrainian population of Crimea were against joining the Russian Federation. The Non-Russian population constitutes 41.7 percent of the Crimean population.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n According to official data, Russians constitute 58.32% of the population of Crimea, 24.32% are Ukrainians and 12.10% are Crimean Tatars.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The Guardian, in a slither of media disinformation intimated that the Tatars feared a wave of repression if Crimea were to join the Russian Federation:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Now, as Crimea faces a referendum that is likely to seal its fate as a province or satellite of Russia, ethnic tensions are reaching boiling point. In a chilling echo of history, Tatar houses in the Crimean city of Bakhchisarai have been marked with an ominous X, just as they were before the Soviet-era deportations. On Monday two Tatar businesses were firebombed.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u2026. The prospect of a return to living under Moscow\u2019s rule is disturbing. \u201cPeople are in panic. \u201cWe are trying to keep people calm but they are scared of the Russian soldiers and Cossacks that come here,\u201d he said.\u201d (Crimea\u2019s Tatars fear the worst as it prepares for referendum | World news | <\/span><\/strong><\/span>theguardian.com<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Contrary to the reports of 135\u00a0 international observers from 23 countries, the Western media in chorus has suggested without a shred of evidence that the elections were rigged and that Crimea was under Russian military occupation.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The observer mission reports which include members of theEuropean Parliament have been casually ignored by the mainstream Western media:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Mateus Piskorkski<\/strong>, the leader of the European observers\u2019 mission and Polish MP:\u00a0 \u201cOur observers have not registered any violations of voting rules.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Ewald Stadler,<\/strong> member of the European Parliament, dispelled the\u00a0\u201creferendum at gunpoint\u201d<\/em> myth:\u00a0 \u201cI haven\u2019t seen anything even resembling pressure\u2026 People themselves want to have their say.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Pavel Chernev: <\/strong>Bulgarian member of parliament:\u00a0 \u201cOrganization and procedures are 100 percent in line with the European standards,\u201d he added.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n A woman is reflected in a mirror as she casts her ballot during voting in a referendum at a polling station in Simferopol March 16, 2014.(Reuters \/ Thomas Peter)<\/p><\/div>\n Johann Gudenus,<\/strong> member of the Vienna Municipal Council:\u00a0 \u201cOur opinion is \u2013 if people want to decide their future, they should have the right to do that and the international community should respect that. There is a goal of people in Crimea to vote about their own future. Of course, Kiev is not happy about that, but still they have to accept and to respect the vote of people in Crimea\u201d.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Serbian observer Milenko Baborats<\/strong> \u201cPeople freely expressed their will in the most democratic way, wherever we were\u2026 During the day we didn\u2019t see a single serious violation of legitimacy of the process,\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Srdja Trifkovic<\/strong>, prominent and observer from Serbia: \u201cThe presence of troops on the streets is virtually non-existent and the only thing resembling any such thing is the unarmed middle-aged Cossacks who are positioned outside the parliament building in Simferopol. But if you look at the people both at the voting stations and in the streets, like on Yalta\u2019s sea front yesterday afternoon, frankly I think you would feel more tense in south Chicago or in New York\u2019s Harlem than anywhere round here,\u201d<\/em> he said.\u00a0\u00a0 (For more details see Crimean \u2018Referendum at Gunpoint\u2019 is a Myth \u2013 <\/span><\/span>International Observers<\/span><\/a><\/strong> By <\/em><\/span>Global<\/span> Research News<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/span>, March 17, 2014)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Yet according to Time Magazine, without acknowledging the reports of the international observers, the ballot had to have been rigged<\/em> and the vote was held under the gun of the Russian military:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u201c95 percent voted in favor of becoming a part of Russia. That may seem like an impossible result,<\/strong> the mark of a rigged election. And in some ways it was. The vote was held during a Russian military occupation of Crimea <\/strong>and the ballot did not offer voters the option of keeping their current status in Ukraine. ( Time, March 17, 2014)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In chorus, Western media reports have stated that both Ukrainians and Tatars were firmly against seceding from Ukraine. They also intimated that the Tatar community had decided not to vote.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n According to the Washington Post, \u201ca vote in favor of seceding\u201d was inevitable because \u201cethnic Russians make up 60 percent of Crimea\u2019s population\u201d. But the result was not 60 percent in favor, it was 97 percent in favor, indicating that all major ethnic groups in the Crimea voted in favor of seceding from Ukraine.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The figures do not add up:\u00a0 The Russians constitute 58 percent of Crimea\u2019s population, yet 97 percent of the vote was in favor of joining Russia. If Ukrainians and Tatars had refused to participate in the referendum, voter participation would have been substantially less that 83.1.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The referendum was also a vote against the US-EU sponsored Coup d\u2019etat.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n What this 97 percent vote also indicates is a rejection of the illegal Neo-Nazi government in Kiev.\u00a0 The Election poster (image above) reads:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n 16 \u043c\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0430<\/strong><\/span> <\/strong>\u043c\u044b \u0432\u044b\u0431\u0438\u0440\u0430\u0435\u043c \u0438\u043b\u0438<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOn the 16 of March we choose\u201d: neo-Nazi Ukraine \u201cOr\u201d the Russian Federation?<\/span><\/p>\n Source <\/a><\/a> Simple math indicates that Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainian population of Crimea also voted heavily in favour of reunification with Russia. Prof Michel Chossudovsky explains <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58,91,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs","category-russia","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93133"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93666,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93133\/revisions\/93666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Distribution_of_ethnic_groups_in_Crimea_2001.png\" "\\"Distribution_of_ethnic_groups_in_Crimea_2001\\"")
<\/a><\/a><\/a>The results confirm that the Tatars and Ukrainians who did cast their ballot, also voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"