|
Stop Hate Crime in Ukraine
Walid Arfush, 07/02/2008 06:12
 Non-whites are murdered in scores, while Ukraine becomes breeding ground for the neo-Nazi and Nazi admirers. |
Several weeks ago, yet again a dark-skinned person was attacked on the streets of Kyiv. This time it was Marcus Faison of Basketball Club Kyiv.
A day earlier at a bus stop, Charles Asante from Ghana was hit over the head with a bottle. At present, he is in the hospital. And a day later, a university student from Cote d'Ivoire was beaten up in the metro. Similar incidents were reported dozens of times recently.
Several offenders who were caught admitted to being skinheads, it was revealed. Nevertheless, many victims did not go to the police since there's scant hope of finding protection from them.
On Oct. 19, 2007, I attended a funeral for an Indian national, Abdura Roba, who was killed because of his racial features.
I don't understand why the Ukrainian government, which is so adamantly striving towards Europe, doesn't want to recognize racism as a problem, especially when it is on the rise.
Acknowledgement of this problem could only lead to earning Europe's respect. Many countries have laws that protect people of other races and nationalities on their soil.
An analogous law exists in Ukraine, it seems, but to have someone punished for breaking that law is virtually impossible. But in the eyes of Themis, racist manifestations are transforming into plain hooliganism.
Thus in France, a tactless public racial expression could get you fined 5,000 euros. A racially motivated attack costs 50,000 euros and two years in jail. At that, all a judge needs for making a conviction is the testimony of two eyewitnesses.
Skinheads in Ukraine are still tried for hooliganism. I have a question for skinheads: How would you react to beatings of Ukrainians in Turkey or Egypt, for example? After all, many Ukrainians vacation in those countries.
The Ukrainian government tries skinheads for hooliganism and this is absurd. Football fans who throw snow on the field can also be tried under the same law. But here throats are cut in just the same way as is done in Iraq.
This is why I want to turn to Raisa Bohatyriova, chair of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, a person who I respect and know is not indifferent to suffering and violence.
Raisa Vasylivna, take this issue under your wings, for the beating and killing of foreigners in Ukraine directly relates to the country's national security.
I appeal to Stepan Havrysh, the President's advisor on legal issues. Call Viktor Yushchenko's attention to the problem. Many countries around the world have already passed laws on racism. But in contrast to Ukraine, their laws function properly.
I also call on First Lady of Ukraine Kateryna Yushchenko. I deeply respect you for being a very tolerant person. You grew up in America, in a place where many races and nationalities live peacefully together.
Are you dispassionate to the kind of Ukraine your children will grow up in? I say this because a country that equates racism with hooliganism is a country that supports racism.
I would like to appeal to Ukrainian members of parliament too.
It is entirely up to you to pass more severe, yet just, laws to combat racism with appropriate instructions and mechanisms for their implementation. All of Western Europe has this law. How many more people need to die on the streets of Ukrainian cities before you start to seriously address this problem? Should this problem not worry you, then think about the country's image, which the local skinheads are ruining.
Many in Ukraine believe racism to be freedom of speech, freedom of thought. It is true that every person is free to their position in relation to people of other races and nationalities.
However, when freedom of speech escalates into verbal assaults towards people with non-Slavic appearances and beatings of foreigners, then it ceases to be freedom and becomes fascism.
Aside from passing laws, the authorities today take the following steps above all:
- put a stop to racist attacks on citizens of other countries, refugees, people without citizenship, and minorities - anyone who cannot be considered an ethnic Ukrainian;
- conduct fair and open investigations into all attacks of a racial bent in cooperation with international experts and observers, and also ensure the safety of victims;
- halt the shameful police practice of humiliating document inspections of racially different people under the guise of fighting illegal migration;
- effectively counter the rising number of neo-Nazi and radical groups, especially among the youth;
- encourage the conduct of public awareness campaigns on xenophobia and racism in the mass media, schools, universities, and target youth.
In addition, what is particularly important is that all of the aforementioned be controlled by a corresponding government body that would be held directly accountable to the president.
My friends from the nongovernmental organization, SOS! RACISM! (that we founded in Ukraine) are confident that only these kinds of comprehensive measures will create favorable conditions on par with global standards of other countries.
We submitted all of these demands last year to the President of Ukraine, however the situation hasn't changed. It has even gotten worse.
I, along with many foreigner friends, chose Ukraine as the country in which we would like to live, work, rear our children, and perhaps our grandchildren.
It is a country that has given us a lot and one which we love.
Valid Arfush is secretary general of SOS! RACISM!, a non-governmental organization.
Source: ACTIVIST
|
15/08/2008 15:48
