Ukrainian Canadian groups hold strategy session on denaturalization/deportation issue (03/07/99)

Ukrainian Canadian groups hold strategy session on denaturalization/deportation issue

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - The Committee for Justice (CFJ) of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) Toronto Branch hosted a meeting of activists from across the country to address the matter of the federal government's deportation and denaturalization strategy in dealing with war criminals.

The February 13-14 meeting was convened to reflect the mandate given the UCC's 19th national congress in October 1998 to make the issue a priority.

The strategic planning session was a by-invitation in-camera gathering of representatives of the UCC national, its Ottawa, Sudbury and Winnipeg branches, as well as members of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) from Toronto and Vancouver, the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Federation, the Ukrainian National Federation and the Ukrainian Self Reliance League in Edmonton. Lawyers from the defense teams in the Johann Dueck (Donald Gillen), Helmut Oberlander (Eric Hafemann) and Albert Vitols (Donald Powell) cases were special guests.

The sessions took place at the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation's boardroom and exhibition halls, adjacent to the UCC Toronto Branch's headquarters.

Among the CFJ members in attendance were Donald Baker and Myroslava Oleksiuk-Baker, a husband-and-wife team who are making a documentary film based on the proceedings brought against Toronto resident Wasyl Odynsky.

They showed participants videotaped excerpts of a December 1998 interview with Paul Vickery, head of the Canadian Justice Department's War Crimes Section. Citing ongoing efforts to secure interviews with other figures in Canada's war crimes effort, Mr. Baker requested that no quotes from the interview of Mr. Vickery (in which the Canadian official discusses the matter of collaboration and coercion) be released prior to the public broadcast of the final version of the video. Mr. Baker said he expects production of the documentary should be completed by late summer or early autumn of this year.

Discussion groups and the full 23-member sessions, chaired by UCCLA Chairman John Gregorovich, assessed the impact of the government's denaturalization and deportation campaign, then formulated proposals for the formation of a Legal Action Committee to pursue various interventions in ongoing and upcoming cases brought by the government; formulated proposals for the organization political action on the local, provincial and federal levels; and suggested approaches for focusing the Ukrainian community's mainstream and community media outreach, as well as countering instances of inaccurate reporting.

Media in the dock

At a press conference held following the sessions on February 14, UCC Toronto President Maria Szkambara attacked the mainstream media's coverage of the cases against defendants of Ukrainian background, saying the reporting "defames Ukrainians."

Although Ms. Szkambara did not cite specific offending articles, she said complaints to the Ontario Press Council and other media monitoring agencies were necessary. "Ukrainian history has been distorted and debased, and we cannot allow the version that has appeared in the press to stand," the UCC activist said.

She added that the mainstream media are distorting the Ukrainian community's position on the war crimes issue. On January 22, Jeff Sallot of the Toronto Globe and Mail daily wrote that "many in the Ukrainian community see [war crimes prosecutions] as the needless hounding of a small handful of very old men." Ms. Szkambara pointed out that since 1985 the UCC has consistently made clear that it favors the prosecution of war criminals in Canada's criminal courts.

Ms. Szkambara also voiced displeasure with what she considered to be inadequate coverage of issue by the Toronto-based Ukrainian-language media. She said community media should be reacting to defamatory mainstream reports.

The activist was taken to task, however, by reporter Svitlana Vyshtalenko of a Toronto-based Ukrainian-language weekly, Meest. Ms. Vyshtalenko said while the UCC Toronto branch's activism was admirable, sporadic contacts with the press are not enough. The reporter affirmed that a constant stream of information is necessary.

Government faulted

Mr. Gregorovich switched the focus of the community's anger to the Justice Department, saying that cases were being brought with an irresponsibly low amount of evidence, pointing out that specific charges of an individual's implication in war crimes were not proved in several cases already.

The UCCLA chair said that this was an inevitable consequence of pursuing such matters in civil rather than criminal court. Mr. Gregorovich said members of Parliament across the country should be made aware that a serious miscarriage of justice is occurring.

CFJ member Roman Kosmyna indicated that in the recently decided Dueck case (in which the former resident of Ukraine was cleared of all charges), the government's lawyers withdrew war crimes allegations outright, and yet continued denaturalization proceedings.

When Allan Rock (justice minister at the time) declared the government would be pursuing war crimes cases in civil rather than criminal proceedings in January 1995, he said that care would be taken to demonstrate that individuals accused were in fact guilty of major crimes.

Canada: an admirable state?

According to a report on the Dueck case by Kirk Makin in the February 20 edition of the Toronto-based Globe and Mail daily, "Mr. Rock assured critics that no case would go ahead without there being evidence of criminal behavior by the suspect. 'If it cannot be proven, no proceedings will be considered,' [the former justice minister] told the House of Commons."

Soon after Mr. Makin's report, in the Globe's February 23 edition, the newspaper ran an editorial titled "Pursuing Johann Dueck," in which it was noted that "the government's evidence ... suffered all the faults of time long passed in Communist countries. [Mr. Dueck] was clearly innocent of the charges, but had endured a legal and personal nightmare."

"If justice delayed is justice denied," the Globe editorialist wrote, "57 years later halfway around the world denies a great deal of justice indeed. Is further lowering the hurdle because the evidence is weak the act of an admirable state?"

Prompted by Mr. Makin's story, strategy session participant Eugene Harasymiw of Edmonton (president of the Alberta Ukrainian Self-Reliance League) wrote a letter to the Globe's editors, which ran in the daily's February 24 edition.

Mr. Harasymiw expressed outrage that a member of the government's War Crimes Section, Terry Beitner, defended the denaturalization and denaturalization policy by saying: "there is no principle in law that requires the government to use criminal law where other principles and remedies can be involved."

Mr. Harasymiw wrote: "That those other principles and remedies take the form of misleading the court, of submitting blatantly falsified evidence, of parading laughable witnesses and then withdrawing the substantive charges that form the crux of the case at the outset of a trial - all this does not seem to deter Mr. Beitner and [Justice Minister Ann] McLellan from savaging their victims' civil liberties and debasing the justice system they are both sworn to uphold."

Results of sessions

At the February 14 press conference, UCC Toronto President Mrs. Szkambara was close-lipped about specifics of the initiatives emerging from the sessions, allowing only that the UCC intends to organize a multi-ethnic conference on the issue, and continue its letter and card writing campaigns aimed at MPs and other government officials.

Mr. Kosmyna offered that the formation of a Legal Action Committee was proposed, but he said to name its chair, members or any elements of its agenda was premature, since all session proposals had been forwarded to the Winnipeg-based UCC Justice Committee on Denaturalization and Deportation. He said formal resolutions can then be adopted by the UCC executive to provide guidlines as to how the Ukrainian community's representatives across the country should proceed.

Mr. Gregorovich expanded on these remarks, suggesting the main achievement of the sessions was that from now on the Ukrainian community's approach to the issue will be somewhat more integrated.

The UCCLA chair noted that people from six Canadian provinces, various UCC branches and various organizations took part. Mr. Gregorovich added he expects "there will be greater direct support and commitment from UCC national" on the issue.

UCC National Executive Director Lydia Shawarsky took part in the two-day sessions. In a telephone interview on February 17, she confirmed that the action plan generated by consensus at the session was forwarded to the national headquarters on February 16.

Ms. Shawarsky said the plan provides for media action (promoting a positive message about Ukrainians in the media), community action (coordination of interested parties), legal action (preparation of briefs, intervention in individual cases on general legal principle), political action (lobbying parliamentarians and bureaucrats) and educational action (research by activists and scholars on Ukrainians in the second world war).

Ms. Shawarsky told The Weekly: "The UCC is prepared to utilize all the resources available within the Ukrainian community to ensure that both the Canadian public and the Canadian government are aware of its position on the matter."

The UCC executive director reiterated the national umbrella body's contention that all war criminals found in Canada should be brought to justice in Canada under Canadian criminal law.

Ms. Shawarsky said a broader strategy planning session which is to "work out the UCC national agenda for the next several months and years" has been scheduled for mid-March. She added that UCC President Evhen Czolij is preparing a brief on the denaturalization and deportation issue that would be released soon after.

The UCC executive director stated the national umbrella body is taking care not to stand in the way of local initiatives. "The type of action may be different depending on what the strengths of the local branches are, but we want to establish parameters to ensure that the same message gets across," she said.

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