Thirty years ago, on August 4, 1989, some 185 police and KGB agents brutally attacked a Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization camp that was set up on the Palanyky farmstead in the Horodok raion of the Lviv region in western Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Helsinki Union reported that two youngsters, who managed to escape on that Friday morning, described how three buses, two mini-buses and three cars full of police and KGB agents in civilian clothing pulled into the farmstead, jumped out of their vehicles and attacked the participants of the Plast camp.
Numerous campers were reportedly beaten, including 17-year-old Roman Tlustiak, who was knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly. Bohdan Tarnavsky, 16, was beaten for photographing the incident through a window.
Eight children were taken into custody in mini-buses with bars on the windows. Their whereabouts were unknown at the time.
The police tore down the tents in the camp, and tore up one of the tents that was made of blue-and-yellow material.
During the waning days of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Christian-Democratic Front sought to renew Plast in Ukraine. Vasyl Sichko from Ivano-Frankivsk, who headed the party, appealed to all members of Plast in the diaspora to call for the release of the detained youngsters.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Plast has seen a rebirth in Ukraine to become the largest scouting organization in Ukraine. This was made possible by the support from Plast throughout the diaspora. Following its 2007 membership (with scouting organizations SPOK and Sich) in the National Organization of Scouts of Ukraine, in 2008 Plast was accepted into the World Organization of the Scout Movement, which includes the Boy Scouts of America.
This year, the Verkhovna Rada approved on May 30 the law “On state recognition and encouragement of the Plast National Scout Organization of Ukraine.” The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America has appealed to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign the bill into law in the hopes that the legal recognition will allow for closer cooperation between Ukrainian and American youth with the aim of stronger economic, political and cultural ties between the two countries.
Source: “Authorities disband Plast camp,” The Ukrainian Weekly, August 13, 1989.