Holodomor 2009: Yushch and Lukash Enkos

president.gov.ua

The best image from this year’s Holodomor commemorations thus far (for Holodomor Education Week is ongoing in Toronto, 83 Christie St., until Nov. 28) has to be the photo snapped back in the first week of November, when Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenka came to Kyiv on an official visit.

The man once called “last dictator of Europe” by the West joined his Ukrainian presidential counterpart Victor Yushchenko in honoring the victims of the Holodomor 1932-33. That’s something Russian Federation president Medvedev has refused despite repeated requests from Ukraine. Lukashenka did this despite warnings from Moscow to the Slavic leader of the brotherly republic to avoid committing “high treason.”

Lukashenka knows full well about what went on in Belarus and across the border in neighboring Ukraine in 1932-33 and his countrymen were not left unscathed by the soviet scythe of death in Stalin’s swinging arms. Declassified documents prove this. Lukashenka’s voice is the latest to join a choir of consensus emerging in the eastern Slavic and Orthodox worlds about the untold evils of soviet rule: They need to be told!

Yushchenko declassified all secret Soviet archives not only pertaining to the Holodomor, but all the way up to 1991. When they shook hands, maybe Yushchenko gave Luklashenka a bit of the “anti-Soviet” bug – a welcome “flu” that should spread to the dozen former Soviet republics from the Baltic to the Pacific still dealing with their communist past.

In Ukraine that consenus is shared by all of the countries churches - including the wealthy Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow patriarchy. Since independence, all three of Ukraine's presidents have championed international recognition of the Holodomor as genocide.

Nobody is saying that Stalin did not commit genocidal crimes in what today is the Russia Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova (and in all the breakaway regions as well.) All the governments have to do is open up the Soviet archives to public scrutiny!

Twenty years may have passed since the fall of a German wall, but the true scale and nature of crimes of the USSR are only now coming to the surface. History is not being “rewritten” or “falsified” as the Kremlin charges: the true history of something that happened 75 years ago has yet to fully see the light of day.

55 days to E-Day: Rada rerun plays, Tymo joke about luck

They may be running for the presidency, but the two Victors talked about new Rada elections on Monday, November 23.

Some would argue that the current parliament, elected in a snap vote in 2007, should sit until 2012, according to constitutional changes hastily adopted during the Orange Revolution. Two years into the Victor Yushchenko presidency, voters elected a parliament to replace the one formed in 2002. But the 2006 vote was followed by political crisis and a snap poll in 2007 when Yushchenko dissolved parliament. He dissolved the Rada yet again in 2007 but his order lapsed when the government and parliament refused to release state funds to hold the poll. (Nashvybir.com.ua)

If elected Yushchenko will give parliament one hundred days to adopt a new Constitution or face new elections and a national referendum. But those 100 days will fall into what could very well be a “lameduck” period of his presidency if nothing like the Orange Revolution is repeated when Ukrainians go to the polls to elect the next president in two months’ time. So this is like Yushchenko saying “elect me, and I’ll solve this constitutional mess once and for all.” And messy it will be: snap polls, referendum debates. Better at the ballot box than on the battlefield.

Seeking revenge for his loss to Yushchenko five years ago, Victor Yanukovych said on national TV that he will dissolve parliament and hold snap elections if a majority coalition is not formed in the legislature once he becomes president. The opposition leader said that if the president, parliament and government are not working as a “state team” then the Rada will face the people for reelection. (Pravda.com.ua)

His main opponent in the polls race Yulia Tymoshenko, meanwhile, said that Ukrainians will never elect Yanukovych and joked about her opponent being “lucky.”
“You have to have a very rich imagination to call a person who sat in prison twice, who, out of fear, twice gave up the post of premier and once of president, lucky,” according to her Nov. 21 statement marking the fifth year since Ukrainians took to the streets in response to state-run electoral fraud. “This reminds me of an anekdot (joke). A sign says: Lost Dog. Features: one eye, limp back paw, one ear bitten, the other completely missing. With three stitches on his maw. Answers to the name ‘Lucky’.” (Pravda.com.ua)

The Stashynsky precedent

Even if Demjanjuk did commit a Nazi war crime, it was ultimately Hitler who ordered it

In Bavaria fifty years ago this month, a KGB agent killed our grandpa Stepan Bandera with a double-barreled prussic acid spray gun. The physical extermination of Bandera was only part of Moscow’s devious plan: the covert killing in mysterious circumstances was complemented with a propaganda campaign whose goal was to cast the shadow of responsibility for the murder onto the Ukrainians themselves, i.e. to make it seem as if Ukrainian leaders were killing off one another. "Ah, those Ukrainians... fighting amongst themselves again..." Sound familiar?

How do we know the truth about this poisoning? It might have never come to light had not the assassin come forth with the details of the killings.

KGB agent Bogdan Stashynsky fled from East to West Berlin the day before the Wall was erected and turned himself in to the Americans. For the murder of two men he was sentenced to a mere eight years imprisonment by a German court. From what we know today, he served only four of those years and was given a new life and identity in exchange for the valuable information he provided US intelligence services about the inner workings of the KGB. Stashynsky was given a break in the name of political expediency. The German high court deemed him to be merely an accessory to murder. The real guilty party: the Soviet state and its leaders. Hmmm, was the German court under pressure from the Americans?

Below are some excerpts from the German court’s 1962 verdict. It might come in handy for those prosecuting and defending John Demjanjuk in Bavaria today.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate Nazis as much as Jake and Elwood do. Our grandfather’s two brothers – Vasyl Bandera and Oleksandr Bandera were killed in Auschwitz. And Stepan Bandera spent most of WWII in the Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp. I felt justice was being served as I watched Tarantino’s inglourious basterds carve swastikas into fascist foreheads. But even Demjanjuk has already been exonerated by Israel’s own judicial system, ferchrissakes!

Assume for a moment that the Germans actually do have a Nazi camp guard from the former Soviet Union awaiting trial for war crimes. The Germans are therefore prosecuting a Prisoner of War they caught and incarcerated. The German are prosecuting a non-German for crimes ordered from up top by Adolf Hitler and “German Nazi persons.”

Was this theoretical person merely an accessory to murder? (A German court found that Stashynsky was on the lowest rung of the responsibility ladder.) Or did he/she commit over 29,000 acts of murder of his/her own volition?

The leukemia-ridden 89 year old John Demjanjuk was deemed fit to stand a trial that is slated to begin November 30 and likely to last for months… Could it be that politics is influencing Germany’s judicial system today as it did 50 years ago? Say it isn’t so, Otto…

Written Motivation
OF THE VERDICT
in the Stashynsky Trial
of the Federal High Court in Karlsruhe

Penal Code §§ 47, 49, 211

A person who commits homicide with his own hand is as a rule the perpetrator; under certain, limited circumstances, however, he may solely be an assistant

Federal High Court, Verdict of October 19, 1962 – 9 StF 4/62

On October 19, 1962, pronounced the following verdict:

I. The accused is found guilty on two charges of aiding and abetting a murder and on a charge of treachery.
II. He is sentenced to a total punishment of eight years penal servitude.
III. Allowance is made for imprisonment pending trial.
IV. The costs of the proceedings are to be borne by the accused.

ARGUMENTS (excerpts)

II. 2) “…certain modern states under the influence of radical political views, and in Germany under National Socialism, have adopted the method of planning political murders or mass-murders, and of issuing orders that such foul crimes are to be committed. In committing such officially ordered murders, the persons who merely receive and carry out these orders are not prompted by the usual personal or other motives defined by criminology. On the contrary, they find themselves in the morally confusing and often hopeless situation of having been ordered to commit most heinous and reprehensible crimes by their own state, which to many persons, as a result of clever mass-propaganda, seems to be an indisputable authority. They obey such orders and instructions under the influence of political propaganda, or under pressure of commands from the authority in power, or under similar influences exercised by their own state, from whom, on the contrary, they might justifiably expect the preservation of law and order. These dangerous criminal impulses emanate not from the persons who receive the orders, but from those who represent the state power and thus violently abuse this power…”

V. “…But in committing these murders he [Stashynsky - SB] was merely the unwilling tool of ruthless political instigators … His guilt is mitigated by the fact that in his earliest youth, in spite of the Christian atmosphere of his parents’ home, he was constantly obliged to witness political acts of violence and bloodshed. The cunning manner by which the KGB caught him in its clutches… has also been taken into consideration by the Court… On the strength of the evidence adduced in this trial the guilt of those from whom he received his orders is far greater. The accused cannot therefore be burdened with the guilt of the high-ranking instigators of these crimes (i.e. ‘the Soviet Russian persons from whom he received his orders’).”

3rd Court of Criminal Appeal of the German Federal High Court in the hearings of the trial on October 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 15th and 19th, 1962, in which the following took part: President of the Senate, Dr. Jagusch as President of the Court, Federal Judge K. Weber, Federal Judge Dr. Wiefels, Federal Judge Dr. Hengsberger, Federal Judge Dr. Schumacher as advisory judge, Federal Attorney Dr. Kuhn and Judge Oberle of the District Court as representatives of the Federal Attorneyship, Chief Clerk of Court Hatz as certificating official of the Court

Source: Murder International, Inc.: Murder and Kidnapping as an Instrument of Soviet Policy, Hearing Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-Ninth Congress. First Session. March 26, 1965. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965).

News from Crimea circa 1850

Photo taken September, 2009
Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
1850s Living Museum, Gold Rush Town

Romanian grapevine revolution

Foreign Minister details 'messianic' Moldova meddling

Moldova's coat of arms - the only difference

between Moldovan and Romanian flags

(balkans360.com)

Months after snatching Serpent's Island from Ukraine, Romania’s Foreign Minister admitted that Romanians were involved in the protests that rocked neighbouring Moldova after elections last week. The poorest European republic’s “pro-European” communist party (PCRM) won a majority to the legislature it has dominated for the last eight years.

Mobilized via Internet, 10,000 mostly youth reportedly took to the streets of Chisinau to protest against the commies and their leader Vladimir Voronin, who has ruled Moldova as president since 2001. Some waved the flag of Romania (that is identical to that of Moldova sans coat-of-arms). Many went overboard and vandalized the parliament building (estimated $40 mln in damages) and presidential offices. Police reportedly detained 200 protesters. (Protests had subsided by week’s end, when “pro-European” communist Voronin, by now enjoying Russia’s support, announced an election recount.)

While lamenting Chisinau’s decision to cancel visa-free travel for Romanians, Romania’s top diplomat Cristian Diaconescu also publicly confirmed that Bucharest has been in the business of giving out passports to Molodovans. He accused Moldova of failing “to act according to the European pattern.”

Additional details about Romanian involvement in the protests, presumably done under the pretext of “getting Moldova closer to Europe” were revealed by Diaconescu during his April 9 press briefing in Bucharest:

“Starting with yesterday [April 8], the authorities in Chisinau carry out a methodical operation for the identification of the persons that participated in the manifestations that took place on 7 and 8 April, 2009. From the …General Prosecutor of the Republic of Moldova we understand that there are also foreign citizens among the 200 persons that are said to be arrested. We have also sent a notification and we are launching a firm and insisting call to the authorities of the Republic of Moldova to officially state the number of Romanian citizens arrested…”

“Thirdly… the internal situation of this State [Moldova] raises important issues regarding the safety of the Romanian citizens to whom we recommend to avoid the travels (sic) to this country. We know that this recommendation makes it difficult for the people with double citizenship, especially because the Orthodox Eastern (sic) is near. Unfortunately we have to make such a recommendation, following the actions and measures taken at Chisinau.”

“…we will continue to support the Republic of Moldova to get closer to the European Union. We consider that this action remains the best option for the citizens of the Republic of Moldova and for the consistency of the Romanian foreign policy during the last years.”

Diaconescu said that Romania has requested “solidarity” from the EU and NATO “to counteract the deviations from the standards of democracy and of the international law, which, at this moment, we think that it represents a sources (sic) of instability in the region were (sic) our country lies.”

Developing:
Ukraine asked to extradite alleged riot financeers Gabriel Stati and Auren Marinescu, both detained in Odesa after the violent protests



Diaconescu's full April 9 press conference:
http://www.mae.ro/index.php?unde=doc&id=13300&idlnk=2&cat=4

Stalins and Lenins under attack

Pottering loses something in translation as Regions, commies miffed

European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering addressed the Verkhovna Rada on Monday speaking in the local tongue to the delight of most of the narodni deputaty who initially clapped in approval when the conservative German politician uttered a sentence in transliterated Ukrainian.

But the white-haired Saxon began losing some of the crowd when he spoke about the democratic freedoms gained by the “Orange Revolution.” Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych may have been among those audibly grumbling disapproval at the mention of late December 2004, when he saw the presidency slip away to Western-backed Viktor Yushchenko. “Is there a problem? A problem with translation?” Pottering asked the restless Rada members.

The communists demonstratively did not clap or rise to honor the president of the European parliament after his speech: Pottering mentioned the Holodomor and lamented the fact that other countries in the region have not come to terms with their Stalinist past like Ukraine has. He put the Soviet Union’s communists in the same league with Germany’s national socialists, landing a black eye to Ukraine’s Leninists (who also saw the rear ends of their proletarian fuhrer’s statues blown off in Russia and Luhansk oblast in the first week of April [see links below]. But the marxists in neighboring Moldova had cause to cheer on April 6, as election results showed that former Soviet republic’s ruling communist party scored a 60 seat majority in Sunday’s parliamentary poll. However Moldova’s communist party is described as being “pro-European,” oddly enough).

Pottering also had a clear message to Ukraine when it comes to changing its constitution:
“Of particular importance for Ukraine is the implementation of a proper constitutional reform, which would establish a viable system of checks and balances and define clear distribution of competences between all branches of power, on the basis of the recommendations issued by the Venice Commission,” he said.

Last week, President Yushchenko said that the constitutional reforms he submitted to parliament on March 31 will be submitted for scrutiny of the constitutional legal beagles based in the Italian city.

Yushchenko’s proposed changes include the introduction of an upper parliamentary house that would be elected directly with equal regional representation (three senatory per region). The electoral system would also be changed to include open list proportional representation in the lower house (occupied by deputaty). Yushchenko’s version would have the presidency cede powers of formation and oversight responsibilities for the premier and cabinet of ministers to the lower house as a way of combating the dualism currently plaguing Ukraine’s executive branch.

Improving the constitution has become a legacy issue for Yushchenko in the last year of his presidency. Ukraine’s parliament ordered presidential elections to be held on October 25 instead of January 17, 2010, as the president initially suggested.

This week Yushchenko agreed to even earlier presidential elections, if voters are given the opportunity to simultaneously elect a new Rada and the deputaty agree to give up their immunity from prosecution.

The back-and-forth can be expected to last until sufficient political consent is manufactured to provide the 300 votes necessary to push through constitution-changing, veto-overriding votes in the already fractured parliament. And you can bet your bottom hryvnia that not too many deputaty are willing to gamble their cushy seats and in early elections… for many it’s possibly their last time at the personally-lucrative parliamentary trough and far from the expected five-year term: the current Rada was elected only 19 months ago in Sept. 2007.

Then, early elections were made possible only after the Cabinet of Ministers led by Yanukovych agreed to finance the elections. But Yanukovych is now in opposition and the premier post is currently occupied by Yulia Tymoshenko, who has her own presidential bid to worry about.

====

For Lenin statues under attack:

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-04-05/Lenin_statues_under_attack.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7976883.stm

Back to Bicameralism

President Yushchenko delivered what’s supposed to be an annual address to parliament on the last day of March. (He was prevented from doing so last year by MPs loyal to erstwhile orange ally and prime minster Yulia Tymoshenko).

On paper, Yushchenko’s speech was very strong, but the delivery appeared strained on the tube. For starters, the president was not in friendly territory and many politicians rejoiced that this was “the last time” this person would ever address parliament. Opposition MPs hung caricatures of the president and provided a suitcase with an oversized one-way airline ticket from Kyiv to Washington. One of the caricatures depicted Yushchenko pointing like Uncle Sam and declaring “You poisoned the president!” (In the afternoon, MPs voted to re-create an ad hoc commission to investigate Yushchenko’s 2004 poisoning and re-appointed KGB veteran Volodymyr Sivkovych as its head.)

Yushchenko’s speech was received like a lame duck. Legislators did not stop babbling while the president reported on the state of the republic and outlined strategic national priorities. The shoom in the room turned into catcalls when Yushchenko announced that he thinks Ukraine needs a bicameral parliament, with an upper house Senat (3 senators per oblast, direct representation) and a lower house called Palata Deputativ (elected according to an open list proportional system). In order to eliminate the current dualism paralyzing the executive branch, Yushchenko’s model would have the Cabinet of Ministers fully subordinate to the Rada (instead of president and parliament) including in foreign affairs and policing that are currently in the presidential purview. The lower house would be fully responsible for forming and controlling the Cabinet of Ministers - another concession from the presidential office.

The idea of the upper house was immediately criticized across the board: it’ll be nothing else but a resort or reserve for oligarchs or lords who are able to spend their way into their senate seats. Yushchenko argued that bicameral models are standard practice in European countries like Czech Republic, France, Poland and Spain.

The idea of creating a bicameral parliament is not a new one for Ukraine. Back on April 16 2000, the majority of Ukrainians (over 80 percent) supported the idea of introducing a two-chamber legislative branch, lowering the number of parliament deputies from 450 to 300 and eliminating immunity from prosecution for MPs. The referendum, initiated by then President Kuchma, was called a farce by the opposition. Five months after the referendum, journalist Heorhiy Gongadze disappeared and Kuchma soon had other things to worry about than over constitutional reforms.
Kuchma would not revisit the issue in a big way until his Independence Day speech in 2002, when he single-handedly announced that Ukraine was going to change over to a “parliamentary-presidential” model of government (in place of the “presidential-parliamentary” model that Kuchma enjoyed during his decade-long rule).

That constitutional time bomb was laid by Kuchma’s new administration head Viktor Medvedchuk, socialist Oleksandr Moroz (supposedly Kuchma’s arch enemy) and commie Petro Symonenko, but did not go off until Yushchenko term as president. Kuchma never saw his presidential powers limited – some would claim circumcised, not quite castrated – the way Yushchenko did. According to the reforms, the president is supposed to be weak!

The fiercest critics of Yushchenko’s constitutional reform announcement point to its timing: “Hello!!! There’s a crisis in the country – factories shutting down, jobless rates rising, banks are holding back money (etc.)… and you’re wasting time rewriting the constitution?”
In fact, Yushchenko’s proposed changes to the Constitution have been on the table since 2006. I

Politicians of all stripes repeatedly sing the same song during the marathon political talk shows bombarding viewers nightly: the current proportional electoral system is in desperate need of fixing. But no party or bloc in the current Rada has actually done anything about. Despite promising voters they will lift immunity from prosecution for legislators, the lawmakers have failed to do so. MPs naturally want to hang on to their seats as long as possible. Plus parliament is so fractured that the task of gathering the more than 300 votes necessary in the 450 member chamber seems insurmountable. The rare occasions this Rada has seen more than 300 MPs vote together are when Tymoshenko’s BYuT and Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions combined forces to pass legislation and override presidential vetoes. Do they have a draft Constitution ready an alternative to the president’s vision? Now that’s question for Viktor Medvedchuk.

Sivkovych’s website (last updated December ’07):
http://www.sivkovych.com/ua/