Plaque honoring journalist Gareth Jones will be unveiled at University of Wales (04/16/06)

Plaque honoring journalist Gareth Jones will be unveiled at University of Wales

TORONTO - A historical plaque honoring the Welsh journalist Gareth R.V. Jones will be unveiled on May 2 at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Mr. Jones was one of the first Western journalists to travel to the Soviet Union and report truthfully on the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, the Holodomor. For that he was denounced by the Soviet authorities and by their sympathizers in the West, including the notorious New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who would go on to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on events in the Soviet Union. Mr. Jones was murdered by Chinese bandits in Manchukuo in August 1935. (For more on Jones go to http://colley.co.uk/garethjones.)

Following a memorial service in the university chapel, with remarks by Elystan Morgan, president of the university, the trilingual (Welsh, English, Ukrainian) plaque will be unveiled in the Quadrangle of the Old College by Dr. Margaret Colley and Nigel Linsan Colley, relatives of the late Mr. Jones.

Organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association with the support of the Ukrainian Orthodox churches of Great Britain and Canada, the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, the Ukrainian American Civil Liberties Association and other donors, the bronze plaque is adorned with a bas relief of Mr. Jones, prepared by Toronto sculptor Oleh Lesiuk. This is the first-ever historical marker including not only the English and Welsh languages but Ukrainian as well.

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