Escambray ENGLISH EDITION
Russia’s Public Chamber is readying to file a lawsuit against the Ukrainian government at European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for the Odessa massacre, carried out by fascist groups.
Ukrainian authorities have to respond for the massive murders of civilians in Odessa and in other cities of the country, affirmed Georgui Fedorov, member of the expert chamber.
As a result of the May 2 fire, triggered by fascist Right Sector organization in the House of Trade Unions, 46 activists died and over 200 sustained burns and injuries.
Many of the victims died inside the building due to asphyxia, burns or were finished off by neo-Nazis when they jumped out the windows, while the police and other authorities did not intervene, as television footage or images, recorded by witnesses, showed.
According to press versions, the police was ordered to withdraw riot forces from the scene, even when the clashes between fascist groups and football fans and Pro-Russia activists, who demanded a referendum.
In Odessa, the families of the victims began the funerals after a 3-day mourning and the identification of corpses.
On the other hand, Public Council for International Cooperation and Public Diplomacy Sergei Ordzhonikidze reaffirms that Kiev’s actions violate the April 17 Geneva agreements, adopted by Russia, United States, the European Union and Ukraine itself.
Military men beat and kill civilians in Odessa and in southeastern areas of the country, while the International Convention against the recruitment, use, financing and training of mercenaries is also violated, the diplomat underlines.
I read this last night and thought I would share – An English translation of a leaflet distributed on April 25 in Sloviansk (A town in the Donetsk People’s Republic, formerly part of Ukraine)
“An appeal to students, miners, and workers:Fellow citizens, we stand for the rights to be a free people, for the right to think and speak our mother tongue, the right to a decent life, and not just survival from payday to payday.Remember how we stood in a united front at the time of the miners’ strikes in 1989 and 1993, then we forced them to hear our voices, but did not take things to their conclusion.We are those who were banging their miners helmets [miners in Ukraine banged their helmets on the pavement expressing protest]. We and our children remember the past. How long are you going to wait for a better life? Maybe it’s time to take power into our own hands, instead of listening to sell-out politicians?We have the opportunity to change our life for the better. Not all enterprises have been pillaged yet, not all industry has been destroyed, and we are a hard-working people, and next to us there is a neighbour – a great country which is lending its hand to help.It is exactly against this that the new slave-owners are against, they who have tried to scare us, for in the new republic [i.e. Donetsk People’s republic], there is no place for them.”
From article by Jorge Martin –
“The most important idea contained in these lines is correct: only the workers themselves, through collective action have the power to make their lives better. The leaflet expresses a deep rooted hatred of the oligarchs and politicians which have ruined the country. Of course, these advanced ideas are mixed with a naïve believe that somehow Russia will come to their help!
That there should be confusion and a mix of progressive and reactionary ideas is not only understandable but also inevitable in the absence of any genuine left wing organisation rooted amongst the mass of workers in the region. However, illusions in Russia, as strong as there might be, can also dissipate very quickly under the hammer blows of events. When Putin announced that he recommended for the regional referendums to be postponed, the reaction of ordinary people in Sloviansk (under siege for a week) and Donetsk was furious. A Spanish journalist in Sloviansk asked people in the city’s central market (which has now been renationalised) about this and the rejection of Putin’s advice was unanimous. “Whatever Putin says we will vote for our independence. Our people have not died in vain,” said one of them added: “Putin is the president of Russia, we are the Peoples Republic of Donetsk. I don’t care about his statements.”
Our position in this situation needs to be clear:
1. against imperialist intervention – neither Washington, Berlin nor Moscow will solve the problems of working people in the Ukraine
2. down with the murderous Kiev government which is waging a war on its own people
3. For the self organisation and self rule of Ukrainian workers.
Today the 8th May is the anniversary of the end of WW2 and the defeat of fascism (for a time) in Europe. Despite the sacrifices our grandparents made fighting the nazis on every front and behind enemy lines, it is sad to see these same enemies reemerge and take control of a european capital for the first time since 1945.
Since the US funded and EU support coup in Ukraine last year, neo-nazi paramilitary groups such Svoboda and the Right Sector are marching under the same banners shouting the same slogans and calling for the same pogroms as their collaborating grandparents did in the 1940s.
The fascist attack against Russia minorities in the city of Odessa who were later forced into the trade union building and burnt alive with the assent of the illegitimate government in Kiev brings back scenes not seen since the 1940s. Such events, then as now, are by and large ignored by our media.
The media and the Obama administration are assisting the government in Kiev in maintaining the fiction that those in Ukraine who oppose the government are strictly puppets of Putin and Russia. They claim that the protests and demands to vote in a referendum about the status of the eastern and southern regions are simply a Russian manipulation.
The dominant narrative in the media, following the line of the Obama administration, is that Russia’s agitation in defence of the Russian-speaking people in eastern and southern Ukraine is just fake propaganda. That there is no threat to Russians, Jews and other minority peoples from the new central government. They assert that there is no fascist menace and that Russian state media has created a caricature of Ukraine’s “pro-European” government merely as a pretext for Russia to separate that part of Ukraine and annex the region into Russia.
The massacre in Odessa, however, gives the clearest evidence of the role of re-born fascism in the unfolding struggle in Ukraine.
Best of luck to the resistance movement of the workers of the South East of Ukraine arming and organising to defend themselves against the reactionary government in Kiev and the fascist gangs that are organising pogroms under its protection. Let’s support their movement to have a referendum on their future and drive out the corrupt and reactionary governors and mount a defence against fascist paramilitaries.
Their flag is neither the flag of the illegitimate Ukrainian government nor the flag of Russia. They fight for their independence and freedom.
May they succeed lest the forces of fascism gain a stranglehold over the whole of Ukraine and spread outwards.