Of . – 2.12.2022 09:43 (act. 2.12.2022 09:44)
Holodomor – National Council Human Rights Committee: “Horrible Crime”. ©Portal/Valentyn Ogirenko (icon image)
The National Council parties behaved differently from the German Bundestag and did not recognize the Holodomor as a genocide.
The National Council’s Human Rights Committee on Thursday condemned the famine in Ukraine, deliberately provoked by Stalin’s Soviet Union 90 years ago, as a “terrible crime”. Furthermore, attention was drawn to the fact that Russia is also using famine as a weapon of war in the current war of aggression against Ukraine. The joint initiative of the ÖVP, SPÖ, Greens and NEOS was also supported by the FPÖ, as announced in parliamentary correspondence.
request to the government
In the approved resolution, the government is asked to continue working so that hunger and deprivation are not used as a weapon against civilians or as a form of pressure on governments, to establish parallels between history and the present and to condemn the associated crimes. to them.
Parties have not recognized the Holodomor as genocide
Unlike the German Bundestag recently, the Nationalrat parties have stopped short of recognizing the Holodomor as genocide. The decision was made to use the term “terrible crime” because there would not be such a broad majority for the term genocide, ÖVP human rights spokeswoman Gudrun Kugler said on Thursday. The term genocide is also controversial among historians, she argues. She described this resolution as a “symbolically important step”. The SPÖ argued similarly. It is important that all five parliamentary parties stand together, said Harald Troch. Politicians have no right to define genocide, complex historical assessments must be left to experts.
NEOS demanded recognition as genocide
Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic, of the Greens, also considered the broad support for the initiative important. However, she explained that a political assessment today would call the Holodomor a genocide. NEOS, which called for recognition as a genocide over the weekend, said it was important “to find clear words as far as possible”. Nikolaus Scherak emphasizes that, from his point of view, it is genocide and that more and more countries recognize it as such. Susanne Fürst of the FPÖ spoke of “hunger killing millions, which is a terrible crime of the Stalinist regime”.
Millions of Ukrainian peasants died of starvation
In November 1932, Soviet ruler Josef Stalin had all grain and livestock confiscated from newly collectivized Ukrainian farms, including seeds for the next harvest. Millions of Ukrainian peasants starved to death in the months that followed. Russia – like Ukraine, a successor state to the Soviet Union – has always rejected the genocide assessment. At that time, millions of people were also suffering in other parts of the Soviet Union, the argument goes.