EDITORIAL: Have you done your part? (10/19/03)

EDITORIAL

Have you done your part?

Securing passage of the Famine-Genocide resolution

Twice thus far we have written in this space about the significance of Senate Resolution 202, "expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the genocidal Ukraine Famine of 1932-1933," which was introduced back on July 28 by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), co-chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission (see our editorials of August 10 and September 21).

This resolution - one of three that have been introduced this year in the U.S. Congress to mark the 70th anniversary of the Famine-Genocide - calls the Famine of 1932-1933 "an act of genocide as defined by the United Nations Genocide Convention" (more properly the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948). It is S. Res. 202 that the Russian Embassy in the United States has been trying to derail because, as its press secretary stated, "We categorically disagree with this assessment of the famine in Ukraine of the 1930s."

This week we once again focus attention on the measure because it needs your action. To date, the Senate resolution has 15 co-sponsors - a nice number but, frankly, not good enough. We can and must do better to secure the support of more senators for this important resolution.

According to Thomas, Legislative Information on the Internet (a service of the Library of Congress), the resolution now has 13 senators as co-sponsors. Listed in the order they signed on, they are: George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), Michael DeWine (R-Ohio), George Allen (R-Va.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) Reports from Washington insiders indicate that Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) also have signed on.

So, Dear Readers, if you do not see the names of your senators on the list above, you know what to do: write those letters, send those e-mails and make those phone calls encouraging your senators become co-sponsors of Senate Resolution 202. Your message needn't be lengthy; a simple and concise request for co-sponsorship of a resolution that is important to you as a constituent and your Ukrainian American community will do. If, on the other hand, you do see the name or names of your senators, drop them a line and thank them for supporting this most significant resolution.

On the 70th anniversary of the Famine-Genocide that brutally killed millions of our people, millions of our relatives, we must continue our work to ensure that the truth will, in the end, be victorious. For, as political theorist and American patriot Thomas Paine, who helped inspire the American Revolution, wrote: "It is an affront to truth to treat falsehood with complaisance."

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