I received this appeal from the Grigorenko Foundation, which is headed by Andrei Grigorenko, son of the famous Gen. Grigorenko, the Ukrainian political prisoner and emigre.
He asked us to circulate this appeal from Myroslav Marynovych, another Soviet-era political prisoner in the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. I don't believe I have had the privilege of meeting him but he was always among the most long-suffering, enduring, and hard-working of the human rights activists of those years.
Later after he was released, he continued on with his thinking and writing and serves as the vice rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University.Every time I hear somebody start in on the "Ukrainian fascists" theme,l I wish they could take a look at the dedicated life and work of someone like Myroslav — and there are so many — and get a clue about today's Ukraine.
Yes, there are thugs and fascists, and if this protest takes the route of a civil war, it's not one I'll be supporting. I'm not one who thinks the Tree of Liberty needs nourishing with the blood of patriots like a hungry god.
Already it seems to me like in a number of places the "Euro" has been dropped from "EuroMaidan" — but then, long, long, LONG after it was dropped from Europe itself — I mean all that business about solidarity and European values and one continent and the Helsinki accords.
This is one of the best appeals I've seen — and I've seen a zillion over the years — because it really cuts through the haze of good intentions to practicalities.
No one likes to see a movement for democracy and justice turn to violence. But…I find that the international justice jet-set had all the time in the world for rock-throwing and Molotov cocktails and barriers and jeering and seizing of cops when it came to Egypt, but they clutch their pearls over the human struggle in Ukraine — that turned aggressive after months on end of the regime using force on them first. I find Amnesty International — !!! — even accepts a fashionable theory nowadays for "defensive jihad" among some of their extremist clients, but their supporters cluck over a guy in a hard-hat hefting a pavement brick in his hand on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Funny, that.
A lot of what I've seen in the last year — around Syria, Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere — has made me want to "resign from the human rights movement." Where do you send your letter of resignation to "the human rights movement" these days? Someone once said "Thomas Hammarberg,"
By that I mean two things — that I don't want to be associated with things like not standing up to jihadists and allowing Al Qaeda to smuggle itself in under the human rights tent merely due to the separate issue of torture, and I don't want to be part of all this palaver about clusters and pillars and synergy and apps — and once again, believe it or not, as if Goma or Srebrenica never happened, safe corridors — when a whole nation is dying in Syria.
The other reason is that I feel it is very futile to be using the human rights method per se in a number of places. That's not a reason not to go on using these methods, but if someone wants to go spend a lot of time trying to get PARNAS registered to run in elections, I totally understand it — it really makes more sense than standing around registering how many demonstrators have been beaten on the head and reporting it somewhere to some UN committee that won't be able to get the Russians to do anything about it anyway for other reasons. "We need the Russians for other things," they will whisper — and they never realize they never get those other things.
I don't think the political struggle is for me, but blogging and witnessing are things we can always do in any setting and that's why I hope people will read this appeal.
It's an enduring mystery to me why Ken Roth, the leader of the free world's civil society, if you will, probably the most listened-to and sought-after human rights leader ever, in all kinds of lists of influential people, presiding over a human rights empire, can't see his way clear to tweeting *something* — a picture, a call on the government not to use force, or on both sides not to use force, or a retweet of some carefully calibrated Western leaders ineffectual statement — *something*.
Not one tweet. In days. Everything else merits tweets — Venezuela, Pussy Riot, LGBT, Sochi, Turkey, Palestine — and so be it. Be thankful we're at least getting a lot of Russia now (it will disappear instantly after the Olympics are over).
But Ukraine? Not a word? It doesn't fit?
So here's Marynovych:
* * *
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.”
Myroslav Marynovych
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