EDITORIAL: Recognizing genocide (10/22/06)

EDITORIAL

Recognizing genocide

On September 25, Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Minister Borys Tarasyuk stated in the U.N. General Assembly: "Ukraine calls upon the United Nations, as the collective voice of the international community to contribute to the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Convention [on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide] by recognizing the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people." He noted that 7 million to 10 million people - about 25 percent of Ukraine's population at that time - died during the Famine-Genocide. Thus, he launched Ukraine's campaign to seek U.N. recognition of the Holodomor as a genocide, hopefully in time for commemorations of the Famine's 75th anniversary. Back in 2003, Ukraine had succeeded in having 25 countries sign a statement that condemned the murderous acts of the Stalin regime, but fell short of characterizing them as a genocide.

It was also in 2003 that Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada passed a resolution declaring the Famine "an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation." The resolution also stated that "in an independent Ukraine the terrible truth of those years must be publicized by the state, inasmuch as the Famine of 1932-1933 was organized by the Stalin regime and should be publicly condemned by the Ukrainian nation and the international community as one of the largest genocides in history in terms of the number of victims."

Significantly, the Rada's resolution cited the conclusion of the congressionally mandated U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine that the Famine was a genocide against the Ukrainian nation. Though the commission's report, which was released in 1988 put the U.S. government on record as calling the Famine a genocide, a stronger iteration of that position, embodied in Senate Resolution 202, never did pass as it did not make it out of the Foreign Relations Committee. That resolution clearly stated that "the man-made Ukraine Famine of 1932-1933 was an act of genocide as defined by the United Nations Genocide Convention."

Most recently, the Congress passed a bill, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 13, which authorizes the government of Ukraine to establish in Washington a memorial "to honor the victims of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933." The Senate committee report on the bill noted that "26 nations, including the United States, have recognized Stalin's 'famine' as an act of genocide."

A day earlier, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko issued a presidential decree on commemorations of the Famine and political repression on a special memorial day scheduled for November 25 of this year. His decree also directed: authorities to allocate land for a memorial to victims of the Famine that is to be erected in Kyiv; the Cabinet to make provisions in the budget for 2007 to fund the memorial and research the Famine (the budget does not now provide for any such funding); and the Foreign Affairs Ministry to be more active in seeking international recognition of the Famine as a genocide, to study the possibility of erecting Famine monuments in other countries, and to organize memorial days at Ukrainian embassies.

Certainly, these are steps in the right direction. However, we strongly feel that the appeal of the World Forum of Ukrainians, issued this past August, which calls for a Holodomor memorial complex (not simply a memorial) to be built in Kyiv is worthy of serious concrete support - not merely fine words - from the Yushchenko administration, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Verkhovna Rada.

If Ukraine does not take the lead in remembering the deaths of millions of its own people and recording for posterity the history surrounding the Holodomor, then we can hardly expect other nations to recognize this genocide and to learn its all-important lessons. President Yushchenko himself said in 2005: "The world must know the truth about all crimes against humanity. Only in this way can we all be sure that indifference will never again encourage evil-doers."

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