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EU to Ukraine’s new president: please, reverse honoring of Nazi collaborator
Published: 25 February, 2010, 16:59
Edited: 05 April, 2010, 09:26
A youth carries a portrait of Stepan Bandera during an ultra-nationalist march in Kiev on October 14, 2009 (AFP Photo / Sergei Supinsky)
TAGS: Scandal, EU, Ukraine, Politics
The European Parliament has called on the newly-inaugurated President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, to reconsider his predecessor’s decision to award controversial nationalist leader Stepan Bandera as a national hero.
In a resolution passed on Thursday, the EU Parliament said it “deeply deplores” the decision, stressing that his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) collaborated with Nazi Germany during the World War II. The resolution suggests that reconsidering this would be in line with European values.
Responding to the resolution, the nationalist Ukrainian People’s Party said on Friday that the document’s attitude to Bandera “is biased and formed by a lack of historical knowledge about the proceedings of World War II in the territory of Ukraine, as well as the personality of Stepan Bandera.” They added that many European countries collaborated with Nazi Germany at that time.
The honoring of Stepan Bandera was one of the last presidential decrees by Victor Yushchenko, issued after his decisive failure in the first round of the presidential election. The decision was condemned by Poland and Russia, as well as a number of Jewish organizations around the world.
The outgoing president during his last official media briefing said he was sure that nobody would dare overrule this decision.
During the war, the OUN was involved in terrorist acts against civilians who opposed a national Ukrainian state, as well as in ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews in western Ukraine. It also collaborated with German occupational forces, later turning against them, when the Reich made it clear that an independent Ukraine was not on its agenda.
25.02.2010, 16:33
3 comments
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An excellent move by the EU and I hope Ukraine does exactly this. It's a good step towards improving morality within the EU thinking. However, there is still lots to do at home for the EU to address some of its member states which are glorifying the Nazis and are racist human rights abusers. On top of this in international terms, it needs to ask itself, why is it opposing UN measures that give weight to opposition of the Nazis rebirth in Europe and worldwide. The EU needs to go much further, getting its own house in order, if it is not to be viewed as a hypocrit, with low standards of morality and human rights within its borders, whilst continually preaching these essential high moral values externally. The EU needs to lead by example, not by lectures, it doesn't listen to itself.
Hopefully Yanukovich will do this but in a more fundamental way by outlawing Holocaust denial and glorifying the Nazis. This will at least allow legal action to be brought against those who continue to promote these views. But I do agree that the EU does need to get its own house in order. It spoke out against Ukraine but not against its own members who follow the same path