UN Again Condemns Russian Seizure of Crimea,

Urges World to Call Ukrainian Peninsula ‘Occupied’

The United Nations again severely condemned Russia for its illegal seizure of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula and insisted that Moscow must return it to Ukraine.

UN General Assembly’s 3rd Committee reaffirmed today, November 15, that Crimea is temporarily occupied by Russia and asserts “that the seizure of Crimea by force is illegal and a violation of international law, and affirming also that those territories must be returned.”

The document was backed by 67 UN member-states, 26 voted against it, 82 abstained. The following Russian minions voted against: Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, Cambodia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nicaragua, the Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

According to UNIAN, the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations reported that the statement also condemned politically motivated persecutions of citizens of Ukraine and called on Russia to free all Ukrainians who are illegally detained in the occupied Crimea and Russian territory. Illegally imprisoned Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, Crimean activist Volodymyr Balkuh and Crimean Tatars’ human rights activist Emir-Huseyn Kuku are designated as political prisoners.

The UN General Assembly’s draft resolution also condemned the “imposition of automatic Russian citizenship on protected persons in Crimea, which is contrary to international humanitarian law,” and called on Russia “to end the practice of compelling Crimean residents to serve in the armed or auxiliary forces of the Russian Federation, including through pressure or propaganda, and in particular ensure that Crimean residents are not compelled to participate in military operations of the Russian Federation,” as well as in “illegal election campaigns.”

It also calls the Russian Federation "to monitor and accommodate the medical needs of all Ukrainian citizens unlawfully detained for the exercise of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including political prisoners, in Crimea and the Russian Federation and allow the monitoring of those detainees' state of health and conditions of detention by independent international monitors and physicians from reputable international health organizations, including the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Committee of the Red Cross."

The resolution urges Russia to refrain from criminalizing the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the rights to peaceful assembly in Crimea, as well as to stop discrimination against those who do not recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea.

The document calls upon all international organizations and specialized agencies of the United Nations system, when referring to Crimea in their official documents, communications and publications, including with regard to statistical data of the Russian Federation, to refer to “the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine, temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation,” and encourages all States and other international organizations to do the same.

After this decision at the committee’s meeting, the draft resolution will be ultimately considered in December.

The first wording of the resolution on human rights in Russian-occupied Crimea was considered in December 2016. It was supported by 70 countries, 77 Russian minions abstained and 26 voted against it. On December 19, 2017, the UN General Assembly approved its amended version with 70 countries for it and 26 minions against, while 76 abstained.

Will Russia take this UN resolution to heart and heed its recommendations or will it reject it as it has rejected all UN’s decisions. Sadly, the answer is obvious to all observers.

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Holodomor: 7-10 Million Ukrainians

Starved to Death by Stalin’s Russia

As Ukrainians around the world solemnly commemorate the 85th anniversary of Russia’s mass murder by starvation of 7-10 million Ukrainian men, women and children, it’s worthwhile to dust off my earlier blog about a United Nations’ decision about famine as a crime against humanity.

The global body had made a significant admission and denunciation about using – or abusing – food as a weapon of mass destruction though it didn’t pertain specifically to the Holodomor.

As I had written, the UN issued a statement on Monday, October 23, 2017, in which it said famine can constitute a war crime or crime against humanity. An independent UN human rights expert had noted that more civilians die from hunger and disease related to conflicts than in direct combat.

“If the famine comes from deliberate action of the state or other players using food as a weapon of war, it is an international crime,” Hilal Elver, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, was quoted as having told journalists in New York.

“It is crucial that the international community understands that it is an international crime to intentionally block access to food, food aid, and to destroy production of food,” Elver emphasized.

So what’s holding back the United Nations from taking the leap from stating that famine is a crime against humanity to declaring that the Ukrainian Holodomor is a crime of genocide? Fear of Russia?

Ukraine, the United States, former captive nations and others for a total of 22 countries have recognized the Ukrainian famine killings as genocide.

Earlier this fall, the US Senate adopted resolution S-435 that is to serve as “a reminder of repressive Soviet policies against the people of Ukraine.” The resolution stated that in 1932-33, “millions of Ukrainian people perished at the will of the totalitarian Stalinist government of the former Soviet Union, which perpetrated a premeditated famine in Ukraine in an effort to break the nation’s resistance to collectivization and communist occupation.”

“Whereas, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, archival documents became available that confirmed the deliberate and premeditated deadly nature of the famine, and that exposed the atrocities committed by the Soviet government against the Ukrainian people,” the senators stated.

The resolution also cited Raphael Lemkin, who developed legal concepts and norms for containing mass atrocities and who tirelessly advocated and ultimately swayed the United Nations in 1948 to adopt the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. He wrote an essay in 1953 titled, “Soviet Genocide in [the] Ukraine,” which highlighted the “classic example of Soviet genocide,” characterizing it “not simply a case of mass murder [, but as] a case of genocide, of destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation.”

The Senate resolution includes these two salient condemnations of the Soviet Russian persecution of Ukraine and Ukrainians: the systematic violations of human rights, including the freedom of self-determination and freedom of speech, of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet government; and the recognition of the findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine as submitted to Congress on April 22, 1988, including that “Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933.”

An epic indictment of the Stalin chapter of Russian history.

Eight and a half decades ago, the Holodomor against the Ukrainian nation was triggered by an intentional, deliberate deprivation of food by Russia. Moscow was fulfilling its plan to eradicate the Ukrainian nation from the face of the earth. It wasn’t merely Josef Stalin or Soviet Russia or Communist Russia. It was singular Russia, regardless of its socio-political mantra, which for more than 1,000 bloody years has tried to subjugate or eradicate the Ukrainian nation.

Indeed, the famine murders in Ukraine of 1932-33 were the fulfillment of the imperial spirit and mission of Russia. Stalin and the Communist Party of the USSR were merely the perpetrators of record at that time. They were crimes against humanity, a war crime and an act of genocide.

Noted Holodomor researcher Robert Conquest, author of The Harvest of Sorrow, emphatically stated that the famine was a deliberate act of mass murder, if not genocide.

Anne Applebaum gave renewed impetus to the Holodomor awareness campaign. With her book “Red Famine – Stalin’s War on Ukraine” and speaking tour, Applebaum brought the story of the Ukrainian famine to the man and women in the street across the US. Fortunately, the media that covered her presentations noted that Russia’s crime was a genocide, using that designation interchangeably with famine and Holodomor.

As Applebaum spoke across the country, she reflected on the long-lasting ramifications of the Holodomor, saying that the genocide continues to shape the thinking of Ukrainians and Russians to this day, and offered examples of how contemporary political problems in Ukraine can be traced directly to both the loss of the patriotic post-revolutionary elite and the men and women who died as a result of the genocide.

Indeed, today Russia behaves toward Ukraine as it has always done. If Ukrainians can’t be cajoled or charmed into submission then they must be annihilated, which is the goal of the Russo-Ukraine War of 2014-18.

In New York metropolitan region, the Ukrainian American community and supporters will hold the annual Holodomor Commemoration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Saturday, November 17, at 4 pm.

Never Forget – Never Forgive!

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