Ukraine has called on the Nigeria’s National Assembly to adopt a relevant resolution to recocognise “Holodomor” as genocide against Ukrainian people.
Holodomor, in Ukraine, means “inflicting death by starvation”. It was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr Valerii Aleksandruk, in a statement to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the victims of Holodomor, said 6 million Ukrainian people were literally starved to death by the policies of Stalin’s regime within two the years.
“Deprivation of food was used as a weapon to ethnically cleanse the Ukrainian territories,” he said.
“For decades this appalling act of inhumanity and an immense national tragedy have been kept a secret by the Soviet Union, vehemently denied and largely unknown to the world,” he added.
The envoy said at the height of crisis, Ukrainians died at a rate of 25,000 per day, nearly a quarter of rural Ukrainians perished, more than 3 million children born in 1932 and 1933 died of starvation.
He appealed to the Nigerian parliament to recognized Holodomor as not simply a case of mass murder but a case of genocide, of destruction of a culture and a nation.
He said similar recognition was done by parliaments of many other countries.
“On October 4, 2018, the U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution, in which the Holodomor of 1932-1933 is recognized as genocide against the Ukrainian people,” Aleksandruk said.
“Mourning millions of innocent victims of Holodomor who were killed by barbaric policy of the Soviet totalitarian regime, we stress the importance of remembrance and maintaining a firm stance in condemning totalitarianism, regardless of the colours it used, and strongly upholding the values of democracy, human rights and freedoms,” the envoy added.
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