UA
FR
DETo The Federal Parliament of Belgium
To The Government of Belgium
We are writing to you on behalf of Promote Ukraine, a civil society, advocacy and media hub in Brussels, to bring your attention to Holodomor Remembrance Month and respectfully call for designating Holodomor as the genocide of the Ukrainian nation and its people.
The Holodomor is a man-made famine committed in 1932-1933 under the leadership of the Soviet Union to suppress the Ukrainian nation and eliminate the Ukrainian opposition regime. The Ukrainian national idea contradicted the ideology of unification in the USSR and therefore became the subject of extermination. The genocide was organised and committed by the legalisation of violent actions and mass murder of Ukrainians, which is proved by more than 400 archival documents. Millions of Ukrainians were starved to death as a consequence of deliberate Soviet policies including the collectivisation of agriculture, dekulakisation, the destruction of Ukraine’s spiritual and intellectual leaders and the forcible deportation of many Ukrainians to Siberia.
According to several sources, the death toll reaches 7 million people. This is close to the population of the Flanders region (6,6 million). The peak of the Holodomor fell in June 1933, when 28,000 people were dying every day, 1168 every hour, and 20 every minute.
Article 2 of the United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as being the:
a) killing of members of a group;
b) inflicting severe physical or mental harm on members of the group;
c) deliberately imposing living conditions on the group which are intended to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) implementing measures which are intended to prevent births within the group;
e) forcibly transferring children from the group to another group.
All of these measures were carried out by the Soviet regime against Ukraine and Ukrainians in1932-1933.
The Soviet Union tried to deny and silence the Holodomor by convincing the international community “not to see” the mass murder of Ukrainians with the help of propaganda and bribed journalists. To this day, the Russian Federation rejects or attempts to minimise the devastating consequences of the Holodomor on Ukrainian society.
The annexation of Crimea and the Russian aggression in the East of Ukraine in 2014 were preceded by the statements of the Russian Federation about “one nation” of Ukrainians and Russians and the non-recognition of the Ukrainian nation. Ninety years after the Holodomor, on the 24th of February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine under the pretext of de-ukrainisation and brotherhood. But this time we can not allow ourselves to let another attempt at genocide happen in Europe. Today, we have to speak loudly the truth about Holodomor and bring awareness as this knowledge will affect the perception of crimes against humanity in the future.
For this reason, considering your deep and enhanced partnership with Ukraine, as well as the commitment to peace and security in Europe, we respectfully request to urge The Government of Belgium to condemn the criminal actions of the totalitarian USSR regime, which orchestrated the Holodomor Ukrainian genocide, and to commemorate the millions of victims of the Holodomor.
Holodomor was recognised as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation and its people by Estonia (1993), Hungary (2003), Latvia (2008), Lithuania (2005), Poland (2006), Portugal (2017), Czech Republic (2022), Vatican (2004), Canada (2003), USA (2017), Georgia (2005), Australia (2003), Colombia (2007), Ecuador (2007), Mexico (2008), Paraguay (2007).
The Holodomor did happen, and we owe history our honesty.
Kind regards,
Promote Ukraine
Sources: https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/population/structure-population
