In the village of Vilino of the Bakhchsarai area the Crimean Tatars demanded to remove a cross which was erected on entrance to the settlement on the Easter eve. The requirement of Muslims caused indignation of Orthodox inhabitants of the region.

Six-meter metal cross was erected on April, 2^nd, on entrance to Vilino next to military-historical memorial “The Field of Alminsky battle” by the social organization “Local Initiatives of Development”. On Sunday, April, 4th, it was planned to carry out its consecration.

As “The Crimean news agency” was informed by the organization, on Saturday in Vilino there came the deputy and the chairman of the Mejlis of the village of Uglovoye who demanded to remove the cross, considering it to be “a precedent for inter-confessional hostility”. After that to the place of events came 15 more persons led by the management of the Vilino Mejlis who stated that the cross erected on road at suburb of the village humiliates faith of Muslims as it makes impression that inhabitants of the village of Vilino are only Christians.

Local law enforcement bodies and the chairman of the Vilino village council interfered with the conflict. It was thus decided to hold extraordinary session of the village council on which to contemplate the arisen problem.

The management of the village council insists on preservation of calmness and declared the readiness to make concessions – to transfer the cross on the territory of the Orthodox church, as the land on which it is erected does not belong to the village council. Nevertheless, active workers of the organization intend under any circumstances to finish works on furnishing and cross painting this week.

At the same time, the Crimean Cossack communities initiated to protect the erected cross from possible, under their statement, attempts of the Crimean Tatars to remove the religious symbol.

Moreover, on the meeting which passed at the initiative of the Cossacks, the Russian social organizations and the Cossack communities of Crimea made the reference to the president of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych with the request to resolve erection of the Orthodox cross.

Authors of the reference declared that at the erection of the cross local residents “faced threat of removing and desecration from outside the Muslim communities of Vilino and Uglovoye”.

It is necessary to notice that similar “crusades” on the Crimean peninsula where lives the most numerous Muslim community of Ukraine, already happened earlier. According to the newspaper “Voice of Crimea”, in 2008 at entrance from Simferopol in the settlement of Zuya there was erected and then dismantled a cross. Then attempt to establish illegal erection undertook a group of Cossacks led by Valery Kostyuk, and it did not go right because of intervention of active workers of the Mejlis led by Refat Chubarov. The cross was not neither consecrated by church, nor resolved by deputies of the village council or the regional council. At the same time the Cossacks were from the village of Ust-Labinsk of Krasnodar territory of Russia. The Mejlis and Ruh named “crusade” the provocation directed on kindling international and inter-religious hostility.

By mass-media