Ukraine asks democratic countries to recognize Holodomor as genocide

Kiev, December 7, 2016   

The Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) has appealed to democratic countries with a request to recognize the Holodomor [a man-made mass famine—O.C.] of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.

Photo by Inpress.ua

The relevant document at the second reading and at the plenary meeting in general was endorsed Wednesday by 233 people’s deputies, reports Interfax.

“In 1932-1933 Ukraine went through the terrible tragedy of the Holodomor which claimed millions of human lives. Through its forcible confiscation of food, its blockade of villages and whole districts, prohibition on leaving Ukraine which was hit by the famine, curtailing of rural trade, its repressions against dissidents, the criminal totalitarian Communist regime deliberately established such living conditions for Ukrainians as were meant for the people’s physical extermination. This policy of the regime was an outrage against humanity, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of December 9, 1948,” reads the Verkhovna Rada’s message.

It should be noted that the Ukrainian Parliament earlier recognized the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as a crime of genocide against the Ukrainian people, and the Law of Ukraine “On the Condemnation of the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Totalitarian Regimes in Ukraine and the Prohibition of Their Symbols” of June 9, 2015 condemned the Communist totalitarian regime as criminal.

According to a study made by the N.V. Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Research of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Ukraine, Ukraine’s total loss as a result of supermortality in the 1932-1933 famine was about four million people, and the decline in birth rate was 600,000. The estimated loss from supermortality in all the republics of the USSR was 8,731,000 people (Russia – 3,265,000 people, Kazakhstan – 1,258,000 people), the historians report.