l Declaration of Human Rights, helped me to understand the importance of human rights for all. He wrote the Declaration to protect humanity from its own kind brought sharply into focus through the stark, yet unfathomable, tragedy of World War II. He penned it too, in a way, for people like me – one of some 40,000 Ukrainians that Canada accepted after the War.
The preamble states: Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people…
The 27 Articles of the Declaration touch on topics ranging from the right to life and liberty; freedom from persecution and fear; equality before the law; the right to nationality; freedom of opinion and expression and the right to a good reputation.
My father was an Auschwitz survivor. He was incarcerated in the notorious Nazi concentration camp for promoting Ukraine’s liberty. Unlike the Holocaust of 5 million Jews by the Nazis, which has been documented and rightly condemned, my father’s plight, and that of some other 10 million Ukrainians who perished in World War II — on the front, murdered, exiled, displaced – is llittle known.
The task of setting straight historic records is enormous. Few are aware, for instance, that the liberator of Berlin and Prague was the First Ukrainian Division, not the Russians. Similarly, the task of recognizing the genocide perpetrated earlier, on yet another 10 million Ukrainians during the Soviet Famine Terror in 1932-33, as a crime against humanity is staggering.
Resistance is everywhere. Sometimes it is so subtle that it fails detection by all but those closest to the issue. For example, my father and other prisoners of Ukrainian descent were not invited to the Auschwitz commemorations on Canada’s Parliament Hill. Efforts by their children to honor these survivors by inclusion were met by silence. Furthermore, ongoing attempts to put up a plaque in memory of the murdered and incarcerated Ukrainians in Auschwitz have gone nowhere. And regarding the 10 million starved to death in one year, as a result of the Moscow-orchestrated famine, the knowledgeable Washington Post writer Anne Applebaum says nothing while citing other horrific human atrocities – the Holocaust, Rowanda, Darfour.
Why are these facts being erased? Why the reluctance, if not a conspiracy of silence, to admit to crimes against the Ukrainian people? Who stands to gain?
After Auschwitz, my father devoted himself to setting the record straight. He co-founded the World League of Political Prisoners while eking out a living – helping thousands of displaced families from losing their minds after being thrown from the horrors of the War into Canada’s mine pits, logging camps, the shmata sweatshops, and other undesirable jobs relegated to immigrants. He brought them dignity, reminding them that once they were freedom fighters opposing Nazi and Communist tyrants, only to be confronted with media taunts from the likes of former Minster of Justice Irwin Cotler claiming that there were hundreds or thousands of Nazi collaborators in Canada. The claim was staunchly supported by Communist ideologues, the Weisenthal Center, et al. The claims were dismissed by the Deschenes Commission, a special body called by Canada’s parliament to look into the allegations. However, the slur that the national aspiration of Ukraine is akin to Nazi fascism still lingers long after the threat of that dictatorship has passed, while Communist and Russia’s atrocities, like those in Chechnya, persist.
It appears that there is an uneven human rights reality: condemnation of dead dictatorships, like the Nazis, is easier and safer than condemnation of the reigning ones. And more worrisome is that while some heinous crimes against humanity are met with repulsion, others get erased. John Humphrey wanted it to be different. The Declaration talks about …universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Canada has abided by the Declaration — accepting refugees like me, tackling poverty, and participating robustly in accepting women as equals. Most Canadians are proud of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s position on human rights in China and respect UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour’s outspokenness and condemnation of Israel’s recent attack on Lebanon.
However, globally, human misery continues to unfold on the TV screens. The emaciated children of Darfour; the blood-soaked bodies in the Middle East; the city carcasses of Chechnya; the dead bodies of journalist Anna Politakova and former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko – all these manifest the chasm between the Declaration’s intent and reality.
Even in Canada, one of the best places in the world, according to the United Nation’s documents, we have issues undermining our commitment to the Declaration. Our native reserves, for instance, compete for attention with some of the poorest housing in Ukraine.
On a visit to Ukraine recently, I witnessed the difficulty of standing up to the excesses of Russia. Ukraine’s parliament recognized the Famine Terror as a genocide by only 233 out of 450 votes. The pro-Russia party of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and the Communist party abstained because, he claimed, condemnation of these atrocities would offend Russia.
The fight for equal human rights for all is far from over. Its pursuit is undertaken everywhere from Ukraine to Canada, thanks to the eminent Canadian John Humphrey, who gave the world its road map. Oksana Bashuk Hepburn is a former Director of Communications, Canadian Human Rights Commission. She has finished a book on human rights in Canada and Ukraine.
