Mustafa Dzhemilev

In the July 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Dzhemilev was placed sixth on the party list of European Solidarity. He was reelected to parliament. Dzhemilev is a member of the Committee on Human Rights, Deoccupation and Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories in Donetsk, Luhansk Regions and Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, National Minorities and Interethnic Relations.

In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Dzhemilev was re-elected into parliament after being in the top 10 of the electoral list of Petro Poroshenko Bloc.

In April 2014, Dzhemilev was handed a document on the Ukrainian border informing him he is banned by federal law from entering Russian territory for five years. The typewritten document was unsigned, with no official heading, and was made public by the Crimean Tatar parliament, the Mejlis. A spokesman for the Russian Federal Migration Service (FMS) said the agency did not have any information on the travel ban. On 3 May, Dzhemilev tried to cross the "border" between the Kherson oblast and the breakaway Republic of Crimea, but he was unable to do so, due to Russian occupational forces blocking the road with tanks.

On 14 April 2014, Dzhemilev was awarded the Order of the Republic by Turkish President Abdullah Gül.

On 3 June 2014, Dzhemilev was awarded as the first recipient of the Solidarity Prize, by the Republic of Poland.

In early November 2011, Dzhemilev announced his retirement from politics. But during the 2012 parliamentary elections he joined the All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" election list and was re-elected to parliament.

Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko stated in October 2009 that a grouping related to Taliban and Al-Qaeda called "At-Takfir val-Hijra" had been preparing an attempt on Dzhemilev's life; two members of the group were arrested.

During the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election he was elected into the Ukrainian parliament on the Rukh list; in 2002, 2006 and 2007 he was re-elected as a member of Our Ukraine.

In October 1998, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees awarded Dzhemilev the Nansen Medal for his outstanding efforts and "his commitment to the right of return of the Crimean Tatars." In an interview Dzhemilev gave shortly after receiving the Nansen Medal, he emphasized that "when violent means are used, innocent people die, and no just cause can justify the taking of innocent lives." The Crimean Tatar National Movement has been marked by persistent reliance on non-violence.

In May 1989, he was elected to head the newly founded Crimean Tatar National Movement. The same year he returned to Crimea with his family, a move that would be followed by the eventual return of 250,000 Tatars to their homeland.

At the age of 18, Dzhemilev and several of his activist friends established the Union of Young Crimean Tatars. He thus began the arduous and long struggle for the recognition of the rights of Crimean Tatars to return to their homeland. Between 1966 and 1986, Dzhemilev was arrested six times for anti-Soviet activities and served time in Soviet prisons and labor camps and lived under surveillance. Dzhemilev is also remembered for going on the longest hunger strike in the history of human rights movements. The hunger strike lasted for 303 days, but he survived due to forced feeding.

Mustafa Abduldzhemil Jemilev (Crimean Tatar: Mustafa Abdülcemil Cemilev, Мустафа Абдюльджемиль Джемилев, [mustɑˈfɑ ɑbdyld͡ʒɛˈmil d͡ʒɛˈmilɛw]), also known widely with his adopted descriptive surname Qırımoğlu "Son of Crimea" (Crimean Tatar Cyrillic: Къырымогълу, [qərəmɔɣˈlu]; born 13 November 1943, Ay Serez, Crimea), is the former Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament since 1998. Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for the Affairs of the Crimean Tatar People (2014–2019). He is a member of the Crimean Tatar National Movement and a former Soviet dissident.

Dzhemilev was born on 13 November 1943 in Ay-Serez, Crimea, then Russian SFSR, though at the time under Nazi occupation. He was only six months old when his family, with the rest of the Crimean Tatar population, was deported by Soviet authorities in May 1944, soon after Soviet forces retook the peninsula. He grew up in exile, in the Uzbek SSR.