Paul Goble
Staunton,
February 1 – Myroslav Marynovich, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group who
spend a decade in the Soviet GULAG and currently vice rector of the Ukrainian
Catholic University, has issued the statement below about how Ukrainians feel
about what is happening to them now. It
deserves to be read in full and is given as such below
What can Ukraine expect from
the West now?
I write to you as a former prisoner of conscience of
the Brezhnev era. All other titles are rapidly losing sense in the light of the
bleeding Ukrainian Maidan.
All my life I admired Western civilization as the
realm of values. Now I am close to rephrasing Byron’s words: “Frailty, thy name
is Europe!” The strength of bitterness here is matched by the strength of our
love for Europe.
If it still concerns anybody in decision-making
circles, I may answer the question in the title.
First and foremost, stop “expressing deep concern”.
All protestors on the Maidan have an allergy to this by now in these
circumstances senseless phrase, while all gangsters in the Ukrainian
governmental gang enjoy mocking the helplessness of the EU.
Take sanctions. Don’t waste time in searching for
their Achilles’ heel: it is the money deposited in your banks. Execute your own
laws and stop money laundering. The Europe we want to be part of can never
degrade the absolute value of human lives in favor of an absolute importance of
money.
Also cancel Western visas for all governmental
gangsters and their families. It is a scandal that ordinary Ukrainians living
their simple lives have to provide their ancestors’ family trees to obtain a
visa while ruling criminals guilty of murder, “disappearances”, and fraud in
the eyes
of the whole world enjoy virtually free-entry status
in Europe.
Do not listen to Yanukovych’s and Putin’s
propagandistic sirens. Just put cotton in your ears. Be able to decode their
lie; otherwise they will decode your ability to defend yourself.
Instead, listen to Ukrainian media sacrificing their
journalists’ lives to get truthful information.
Do not rely so much upon the information provided by
your special correspondents in other countries who come to Ukraine for a day or
two. Hire Ukrainians who live in this country to translate the Ukrainian cry of
pain. Secure money for that right now instead of waiting for funds from next
year’s budget.
Come to Ukrainian hospitals and talk to so-called
“extremists” who want to “subvert the legitimately elected government,” those
who have “cruelly beaten” policemen and “deliberately” blasted explosives to
wound themselves.
Yes, the face of war is cruel. But, arriving at the
Maidan, these people repeated almost literally what King George VI said to his
people on the 3 September 1939: “We have been forced into a
conflict, for we are called… to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it
were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilized order in the world.”
Go out of your zone of comfort! Just recall the coddled ancient Romans who
refused to do that in time. Cajoling Putin won’t bring you security. Letting
him take control over Ukraine could make the world peace even more vulnerable.
A Ukraine divided by force won’t bring the world peace, just as a Poland and
Germany divided by force didn’t bring peace to the world.
Let us conclude in solidarity with the King and the
Ukrainian people: “The task will be hard. There may be dark days
ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield, but we can only do
the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If
one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or
sacrifice it may demand, then with God's help, we shall prevail.”
No comments:
Post a Comment