PAGAJ CONDEMN ARTIFICIAL FAMINE-GENOCIDE OF UKRAINIAN FARMERS BY USSR
Ambassador of Ukraine H.E. VOLODYMYR LAKOMOV Disclosed bitter facts of hunger genocide
Islamabad (UNP): Memorial Day of remembrance of victims of hunger-genocide of the years 1932-1933 in Ukraine was observed in embassy of Ukraine. Since 2006 Ukraine officially marks a Holodomor Memorial Day on the fourth Saturday of November. The official Memorial Day of Remembrance of Victims of Hunger-Genocide of the years 1932-33 to be marked this year on the 22nd of November, 2014. This is being done, inter alia, according to the Decree of the President of Ukraine No.830 29 October, 2014. Third Secretary of Economic Affairs Office Embassy of Ukraine Taras MYKYTENKO briefed in detail the pictorial story of artificial famine-genocide of Ukrainian farmers by USSR. The briefing was heart touching as hearing enhance understanding while seeing is believing.
Earlier in his opening remarks Ambassador of Ukraine H.E. VOLODYMYR LAKOMOV said, we are officially opening the topical exposition in remembrance of those Ukrainian Compatriots, who were killed by manmade artificial Famine-Genocide of 1932-33 (also known in Ukrainian as “Holodomor”) designed by general secretary of the Communists Party Central Committee Joseph Stalin. The term Holodomor (death by hunger) refers to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians in 1932–33 as a result of Soviet policies. The Holodomor can be seen as the culmination of an assault by the Communist Party and Soviet state on the Ukrainian peasantry, who resisted Soviet policies.
“By the end of the 1920s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the collectivization of agriculture. The majority of Ukrainians, who were small-scale or subsistence farmers, resisted. The state confiscated the property of the independent farmers and forced them to work on government collective farms. The more prosperous farmers (owning a few head of livestock, for example) and those who resisted collectivization were branded kulaks (rich peasants) and declared enemies of the state who deserved to be eliminated as a class. Thousands were thrown out of their homes and deported. In 1932, the Communist Party set impossibly high quotas for the amount of grain Ukrainian villages were required to contribute to the Soviet state. When the villages were not able to meet the quotas, authorities intensified the requisition campaign, confiscating even the seed set aside for planting and levying fines in meat and potatoes for failure to fulfill the quotas. Special teams were sent to search homes and even seized other foodstuffs.” Ukraine envoy in Pakistan added more.
In response to a question raised by President Pakistan Association of Green Agricultural Journalists (PAGAJ) Raja Javed Ali Bhatti H.E. VOLODYMYR LAKOMOV disclosed that Starving farmers attempted to leave their villages in search of food, but Soviet authorities issued a decree forbidding Ukraine’s peasants from leaving the country. As a result, many thousands of farmers who had managed to leave their villages were apprehended and sent back, virtually a death sentence. A law was introduced that made the theft of even a few stalks of grain an act of sabotage punishable by execution. In some cases, soldiers were posted in watchtowers to prevent people from taking any of the harvest. Although informed of the dire conditions in Ukraine, central authorities ordered local officials to extract even more from the villages. Millions starved as the USSR sold crops from Ukraine abroad. Although the USSR vigorously denied that the Holodomor had occurred. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party, secret police, and government archives that have become accessible to researchers support the conclusion that the famine was caused by Soviet state policies and was indeed intentionally intensified by Soviet authorities.
At this occasion President Pakistan Association of Green Agricultural Journalists (PAGAJ) Raja Javed Ali Bhatti Condemn artificial Famine-Genocide of Ukrainian farmers by USSR. PAGAJ demanded to register a case of war crime in international court of justice and demanded for symbolic but capital punishment of the all concerned.