They aren’t throwing Molotov cocktails at police or wielding baseball bats while wearing body armor, but EuroMaidan is finding support among expatriates who are inspired by Ukraine’s struggle for basic human justice and dignity.
In addition to attending daily or weekend rallies, some are vocal on social media networks and even donate medicine, food and clothing, while others have provided shelter to freezing protesters. Other expats, meanwhile, are so skittish about being involved that they refuse to discuss the political crisis.
Some openly support EuroMaidan’s goal of ousting President Viktor Yanukovych. Even though they are foreigners – and hence guests – in another country, they feel called upon to take a stance.
“It’s the right thing to do, I just can’t sit back and watch people disappear, get tortured, or be killed,” said Liverpool native Chris Taylor, who estimates he has been to the demonstration at least 50 times.
As the founder of the “Expats for Euromaidan” Facebook page – boasting nearly 3,000 members –Taylor got active during the Million Person march on Dec. 1, the day after police early on Nov. 30 used brutal force to clear the central square of mostly university students.
The four-year resident of Kyiv has donated money and clothing to EuroMaidan, and spent one night with a group of expatriates patrolling the square after police attempted a crackdown of the area on Dec. 10. “I don’t understand how people could be passive and not stand up for their rights…it’s their civic duty to protest their government,” Taylor said.
As a foreigner, Swedish marketing trainer Anders Ostlund weighed the morality of his actions before standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukrainians in the bone-chilling cold. Admitting that it was an “intense but short moral debate,” Ostlund said when “another human being is confronted with challenges, then you’ve an obligation to support them.”
His Facebook page’s cover picture contains mug shots of the first four protesters who were killed: Yuri Verbytsky, Myakhailo Zhidnevsky, Serhiy Nihoyan and Roman Senyk.
“It is very important to honor the people who gave their lives to be free citizens…those who made the ultimate sacrifice,” said Ostund, adding that he has considered the possibility of being “deported, beaten up, shamed…so be it.”
Also critically vocal on Facebook and a regular fixture in the protester encampments is What’s On magazine publisher Paul Niland. Most recently he gave an on-camera, English language tour of EuroMaidan on Jan. 31 for Spilno TV, a non-profit internet project.
Referring to the corruption of the current regime, the Irishman said “they must be stopped…the tricks they have played, including the Jan. 16 draconian laws, this all has to stop.”
He is worried about his personal safety. He removed EuroMaidan-related patches from his coat after a busload of “goons and a police car” was stationed in the courtyard of his residence on Feb. 1. Ultimately, Niland says he visits EuroMaidan to “to talk to and understand the people and I do this because I love Ukraine.”
Others who consider Ukraine their home away from home include 20-year resident Scotsman Euan MacDonald, a former Kyiv Post editor. He and other expats with children say they want a better future for them and feel it is their professional duty to record the events.
Speaking of his two sons, MacDonald said: “I don’t want them to grow up in an (Alexander) Lukashenko or (Vladimir) Putin-like dictatorship.” As an editor and journalist, he has contributed stories and reported from the scene.
Being vocal and visible has its risks.
Danish reporter and longtime Kyiv resident Johannes Andersen was one of the first to record the scene of Independence Square after riot police violently dispersed protesters there on Nov. 30. In a recording then went viral online, he sustained a concussion while filming two police officers beating two protesters who were trying to flee the area.
“I felt it as my obligation as a reporter to document whatever was going on and the police brutality,” said Andersen. “I managed to get some footage of that, shots that were rare at the time, scenes to which the nation woke up to that morning…and for that I got a beating.”
Georgian citizen George Kikvadze had to resign his post as managing director of Ukrainian agribusiness Terra Food after he was refused entry to Ukraine on Dec. 21. He had been posting pictures of himself at EuroMaidan on his Facebook page. After spending the night at Boryspil, he flew back to Tblisi and made arrangements for his Ukraine-born son and wife to move back with him.
Polish Solidarity activist Zbigniew Bujak discovered that the Security Service of Ukraine had banned him from the country after he and another Solidarity movement activist had attended a EuroMaidan forum on Jan. 11 in Kharkiv.
On Jan. 31 the vehicle of a Canadian Embassy staffer was set ablaze in what appeared to be retribution for her attendance of EuroMaidan rallies. The incident came six days after Canada imposed travel bans for unnamed Ukrainian officials in response to violence against protesters.
On the night of Jan. 27, a Western journalist based in Kyiv who didn’t want to be identified for safety concerns said he was tailed home by a young man who followed him inside the apartment building of his residence. The man sat on the stairwell outside the journalist’s apartment for 30 minutes before a neighbor asked him to leave.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
