Yuri Andrukhovych, an Ukrainian prose writer, poet and essayist, wrote an open letter to all of us. All of us who care, or claim to care, about peace, democracy and freedom. Here are excerpts from his letter:
During the less than four years of its rule, Viktor Yanukovych’s regime has brought the country and the society to the utter limit of tensions. ... The scale of what has been stolen and usurped exceeds all imagination of what human avarice is capable.
The only answer this regime has been proposing in the face of peaceful protests, now in their third month, is violence, violence that escalates and is “hybrid” in its nature: special forces’ attacks at the Maidan are combined with individual harassment and persecution of opposition activists and ordinary participants in protest actions... The key word here is intimidation...
... on January 16th in a crude violation of all rules of procedure and voting, indeed of the Constitution itself, in the course of just a couple of minutes with a simple show of hands voted in a whole series of legal changes which effectively introduce dictatorial rule and a state of emergency in the country without formally declaring them....
If dictatorship wins, Europe must take into account the prospect of a North Korea at its eastern border and, according to various estimates, between 5 and 10 million refugees...
When darkness falls on Kyiv, unidentified groups of “people in civilian clothes” roam the city, hunting for the young people, especially those who wear the symbols of the Maidan or the European Union. They kidnap them and take them out into forests, where they are stripped and tortured in fiercely cold weather... (see the video in earlier post)
One more characteristic detail: in Kyiv hospitals the police force entraps the wounded protesters; they are kidnapped and taken out for interrogation at undisclosed locations...
To conclude: in Ukraine full-scale crimes against humanity are now being committed, and it is the present government that is responsible for them. If there are any extremists present in this situation, it is the country’s highest leadership that deserves to be labelled as such.
...The Ukrainian people, without exaggeration, now defend the European values of a free and just society with their own blood.
FULL TEXT
Online since year 2000.// Online od roku 2000.
