Monday, 16 June 2008, BBC

Ukraine pushes for Nato schedule

Ukraine hopes to be approved as a candidate for membership of Nato by the end of the year, its president said while hosting a top Nato delegation.

Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer encouraged Ukraine, but said it still needed to bring in reforms.

He also said the matter was one for Nato to decide, and should not be influenced by a "third party" - an apparent reference to Russia.

However, some Ukrainians joined protests in Kyiv against Nato entry.

"We very much hope that a positive decision will be taken this year," President Viktor Yushchenko said.

Nato foreign ministers are set to meet in December.

Mr De Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary general, and representatives of the 26 Nato member states are in Ukraine on a two-day tour.

Ukraine's Kateryna Bondarenko, kisses the Birmingham DFS Classic trophy after beating Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium in the final of the women's tennis tournament, Birmingham, England, Sunday, June 15, 2008. (AP Photo/Simon Dawson)

Your Eminence Archbishop Yurij Kalistchuk, Your Grace Bishop Stefan Chmiliar, Honourable Guests, Distinguished Church and Community Leaders, Ladies and Gentlemen -  firstly, I would like to thank all those who continue to advocate Holodomor recognition or have contributed to creating or sponsoring our exhibit.

On behalf of the League of Ukrainian Canadians and our partner the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women, I would like to thank our friends in City Council, in particular Mayor David Miller and Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby, for sponsoring the display of the exhibit in this beautiful facility; and our friends in the Ontario Government and Legislature, in particular Member of the Provincial Parliament for Brant, Dave Levac, who has  championed our cause by introducing yesterday a Private Member’s Bill on recognition of the Holodomor as genocide in the Ontario Legislature. Your support, Mr. Levac, is greatly appreciated by the Ukrainian Canadian community. And I would like to thank our friends in the Government of Canada, Senate of Canada and House of Commons, who continue to move the process of recognition forward at the Federal level. Special thanks to Speaker of the Ontario Legislature, Steve Peters; Minister of Natural Resources, Donna Cansfield; MPP for Etobicoke – Lakeshore, Laurel Broten; leading member of the Ontario New Democratic Party, Cheri DiNovo; and member of the Ontario PC Party, Frank Klees; that’s provincially, and federally to Member of the Senate of Canada, Raynell Andreychuk; and Members of the House of Commons, James Bezan, Peggy Nash and Borys Wrzesnewskyj, for all your advice and support.

EDUCATION AND GENOCIDE

Ethnic pressure

The Globe and Mail

May 19, 2008

The Toronto District School Board has set a dangerous precedent by yielding to demands from the Turkish-Canadian community that it withdraw a book about genocide from the recommended reading list of a new high school course.

The board's capitulation over the inclusion of Barbara Coloroso's Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide in a grade 11 history course called Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity creates the unsettling perception that individual ethnic groups can dictate the way we teach history in our public schools.

The study of genocide

ROMAN SERBYN

Département d'histoire, Université du Québec à Montréal

June 14, 2008, published by The Globe and Mail

The Toronto District School Board curriculum on genocide is objectionable not by what it includes in the course of study but by what it leaves out (High-School Course On Genocide Draws Protests - Toronto edition, June 13). Forced starvation has been a weapon in the genocidal extermination of peoples since time immemorial. It was used in time of war to bring impregnable cities to their knees, and in time of peace to destroy undesirable minorities. To leave the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, out of the curriculum makes no pedagogical sense.

The UN Convention on Genocide describes various mechanisms of genocide. One of them is "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." For decades, Canada perpetuated this slow genocidal destruction against our "first nations." Surely, this aspect of our history must also be included in any meaningful teaching about genocide.

Message to Moscow

JAMES MARSON

The Globe and Mail

June 11, 2008

The Canadian government's recent move to recognize Holodomor, the 1932-3 famine in Ukraine, as genocide needs to be taken out of the cynical context that some critics try to set it in. Whether or not it is a play to the Ukrainian diaspora, it is an important step in standing up to Russia's refusal to come to terms with Ukraine's autonomy as an independent state.

The destructive policy of collectivization was pursued throughout the Soviet Union from the end of the 1920s. The measure met with resistance from peasants, so the authorities decided to force them onto collective farms by starving them. Ukraine, the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, became a centre of resistance, and was hit particularly hard.

Media Advisory : Holodomor Exhibit at the Etobicoke Civic Centre

This year, Ukrainians worldwide are commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, in which as many as 10 million Ukrainians, almost half of them children,  perished through forced starvation. In Canada, the Ukrainian Canadian community began to mark the 75th anniversary by displaying the exhibit Holodomor: Genocide by Famine at Toronto City Hall in April of this year, and by sponsoring the journey throughout Canada of the International Remembrance Flame. The exhibit, which is sponsored by the League of Ukrainian Canadians and League of Ukrainian Canadian Women, will be on display at the Etobicoke Civic Centre from 6:30pm on June 6 to 6:30pm on June 13, 2008.