No Summer Lull in Ukraine

By Walter Derzko

August is usually a quiet month for events and politics in Ukraine. With everybody off on vacations, usually we can expect a summertime lull with the occasional surprise, such as the arrest of Yulia Tymoshenko last summer. But no lull this year. With the up and coming parliamentary elections in October, election campaigns and dirty political tricks and technologies are in full swing and most of the country is still fuming over the recently passed language law giving Russian (and supposedly other minority languages) regional status.

A billboard in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast triggered laughs and snickers nationwide and around the world. It depicted a grandmother saying that she would change her will, leaving the family house to her cat after learning that her grandson had voted for the pro-presidential Party of Regions. Even though it was removed after one day, photos of it went viral online, spawning further “copycat” humour (pun intended).

Local Ukrainian media reported that the billboard owner was hospitalised after an “interview” with local authorities, and subsequently, other billboards that were critical of the regime were either vandalised or cut up into pieces during the course of one night. Of course, the vandals were never caught.

In the mean time, opposition and independent candidates for Parliament across the country are reporting incidents of pressure, intimidation, threats and other dirty tactics. Illegal police searches have jumped, as have the registration of so-called clones, or candidates with the same first and last names as oppositionists, an overt tactic to blindly confuse voters. Serhiy Teriokhin, a United Opposition candidate in Kyiv’s Holosiyivsky District, will also be running against several other Teriokhin’s – namesakes that were registered with the Central Election Commission [Kyiv Post, August 16, 2012].

“The intimidation and squeezing of independent and opposition candidates is part of a purposefully crafted plan by Yanukovych and his party” to hold on to power despite falling popularity, said Oleksiy Haran, a political science professor at Kyiv Mohyla Academy.

Party of Regions MP Mykhailo Chechetov caused an uproar all across Ukraine with his blatantly racist and degrading remarks in the ForUm news media story “PR MP: Only Russian can be regional language” (see http://en.for-ua.com/news/​2012/08/16/142441.html )

“So far, only Ukrainian and Russian require a special status within the territory of Ukraine, deputy chairman of the Party of Regions Mykhailo Chechetov told [reporters]. 46 million people understand two languages: Russian and Ukrainian [false assertion - WD]. Not Bulgarian, not Hungarian, not Romanian, not Jewish, Yiddish or Hebrew, I do not know how it is called [discrimination? racism?- WD]. Only a handful of people understand these languages.  We’re talking about two languages, which all the people understand,” Chechetov said [false assertion - WD].  However, according to the MP, the law on principles of national language policy by PR members Vadym Kolesnichenko and Serhiy Kivalov meets the requirements of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.”

One blog post writes that the Yanukovych regime can be considered racist by the UN
[ see  http://o-danylyuk.livejournal.com/275852.html]   He contends:  “The parade of failures of other national minorities, except Russian, in recognition of their regional languages, is nothing but discrimination on ethnic grounds. Chechetov made it clear that the use of the language law can be counted on only by people considered to be first class - the Russians; all the rest have to sit quietly and not uphold their language rights. I want to emphasize that Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine provides for punishment of imprisonment for up to 8 years for the violation of the equality of citizens regardless of their nationality.

In addition, this is a direct violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which provides for the inadmissibility of any segregation along ethnic lines.

The civic movement “Common Cause” or Spilna Sprava plans to help support national minorities in an address to the UN calling for the recognition of the regime of Yanukovych as a racist Russian regime [see http://www.spilnasprava.com/wp/?p=11217 ].

The only concrete action that the Ukrainian government will take on the new regional language law is to create another layer of enforcement, cadres of language police that will intimidate business and target patriotic NGO’s and extract more bribes and impose fines. Russian soft power.

According to returning tourists, three or four weeks ago, boarder guards, customs people and airport personnel spoke Ukrainian to tourists during Euro 2012, now they have all been replaced by Donetsk loyalists, people associated with the Party of Regions who only speak Russian.

Lastly, as part of the impeachment process against the President of Ukraine, the United Opposition announced that they found an ex-judge from the Constitutional Court who will testify as a witness that he was pressured by the President to pass the old Constitution.

And of course in Lviv, we have the 100^th year celebration of Plast, the Ukrainian Scouting organization.

Summer lull, indeed, in Ukraine!

Walter Derzko is the Executive Director of the Strategic Foresight Institute (SFi) in Toronto.