Open Statement to the International Democratic Community

In the middle of the night, from 10 to 11 December 2013, the troops of the Ukrainian special forces started another brutal attack on the peaceful demonstrators in Kyiv. Aside from the regular police, militia men were also widely involved, having been brought from the depressed cities of eastern Ukraine. Some of them were deployed to cause provocations, as it had been done during the scripted assault on the interior troops at the building of President’s Administration on December 1.
This time the Government and their local and Russian political technologists started to imitate the “Nazi-like” activities in the protests. More than a dozen young individuals wearing helmets with swastika and armed with armature rods were trying to break through to Maidan and stir up a fight with the police. Fortunately, the protesters prevented them just in time.

This incident could have been dismissed if there had been no ongoing campaign conducted for years by the Moscow-financed agents in Ukraine, Russia and the West to discredit Ukraine, the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian nationalist movement and the modern Ukrainian democratic opposition. It’s task aimed to undermine the solely idea of Ukrainian independency in order to recapture Ukraine and restore the Russian Empire. The main message of this campaign is to present Ukrainians as perpetual xenophobes and pogrom-orchestrators, anti-Semites and Nazi accomplices. It is obvious that today we have to deal with efforts at ascribing the same image to those, who came out to protest against the actions of the President Yanukovych and his subordinates.
As a result of this, we want to emphasize with all responsibility that current protests in Ukraine have brought to life the desire of the vast majority of the Ukrainian society to, at last, peacefully integrate into the European civilization, European political and economic community, which calls for, in particular, the implementation of modern, universally acceptable human standards of relations among individuals, peoples, confessions, etc. The main principle of the protest movement, approved by all opposition parties and regular participants of the protests, is the refusal to use force and divide the Ukrainian political nation by any traits.
We urge the International Democratic Community not to believe the provocations of the security services, resolutely condemn the violence by the current Government of Ukraine and support the aspirations of the Ukrainian people toward Freedom and Democracy.

Refat CHUBAROV,
Head of Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People

Semen GLUZMAN,
President of the Ukraine Psychiatrists Association, human rights activist and former political prisoner

Tetyana KHORUNZHA,
Editor-in-chief of “Forum of Nations” newspaper

Myroslav MARYNOVYCH,
Vice-Rector of Ukrainian Catholic University, human rights activist and former political prisoner

Vitaly NAKHMANOVYCH,
Leading researcher of Museum of Kyiv History, Executive Secretary of the «Babyn Yar» Public Committee

Myroslav POPOVYCH,
The Ukraine National Academy of Sciences academician, Director of the Institute of Philosophy

Meylakh SHEYKHET,
Director of the Representative Office in Ukraine of the Union of Councils for the Jews in the Former Soviet Union

Taras VOZNYAK,
Editor-in-chief of Independent Cultural Magazine “JI”

Joseph ZISSELS,
Chairman of the Ukraine Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities, Executive Vice-President of the Congress of National Communities of Ukraine, human rights activist and former political prisoner