PACE committee recognizes erasing of Ukrainian cultural identity by Russia as element of genocide

The Committee for Culture of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has recognized the erasure of Ukrainian cultural identity as a tool of Russia’s war against Ukraine and an element of the policy of genocide, aimed at killing the Ukrainian nation.

Source: Yevhenia Kravchuk, member of the Ukrainian delegation in PACE, on her Facebook page, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Kravchuk noted that the committee for culture of the PACE in Copenhagen unanimously supported her resolution "Counteraction against the Erasure of Cultural Identity during Wartime and Peace".

PACE will consider adopting the resolution at its session in June. Among the key provisions of the document are the following: 

• facilitation of full compensation of damage under international law and guaranteed non-repetition on the damage;
• increasing the awareness on how propaganda, colonial and non-colonial practices, mainly the ideology of the "Russian world", can create the basis for violating the international law, specifically concerning cultural heritage;
• providing for the sanctions against everyone who conducts or facilitates illegal transfer or trade of artefacts, conducts illegal excavations or uses artefacts for their own gain (exhibitions, auctions, scientific publications), as well as facilitating the prosecution of the authorities and state institutions involved.

The resolution enshrines that Russia uses cultural "cleansing" as a tool of war in order to facilitate the existence of another cultural identity and erase the historical roots, values, heritage, literature, traditions and language.

Such actions are war crimes and crimes against humanity and are evidence of a concrete genocidal intention to kill the Ukrainian nation or at least part of it, mainly by destroying the Ukrainian cultural identity and culture, Kravchuk stated. This is a part of the genocide campaign which Russia is conducting against the Ukrainian people.

Kravchuk illustrated her speech in the Committee for Culture with a book by a writer Volodymyr Vakulenko published by the Vivat publishing house, the printing house of which in the city of Kharkiv was destroyed in a Russian missile strike. Volodymyr Vakulenko was killed by the Russian occupiers. Viktoria Amelina, who had found Vakulenko’s diary he had written during occupation, and wrote a preface for the book, was also killed as a result of the Russian missile attack.

"This is a tragic story. "The New Executed Renaissance" (the Executed Renaissance is the generation of Ukrainian language poets, writers, and artists of the 1920s and early 1930s who lived in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic – ed.) – is what my resolution is about. It is about how we can preserve what Russia is trying to destroy, kill and erase. It is about Ukrainian culture, our heritage and identity," Kravchuk commented.

In January, PACE adopted the resolution on the situation of Ukrainian children.

The document contains the important political confirmation that Russia is committing the crime of genocide by systematically kidnapping Ukrainian children.

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