UKRAINE TAKES A LEAD IN VIOLATING HUMAN RIGHTS

1,500 complaints were sent last year to the European Court of Human Rights from Ukrainian citizens. So, the republic boasting of its “europeanism” has appeared 8th by the complaint frequency. Interestingly, Ukraine is inferior by this parameter to Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Poland, and Turkey, IMA-press reports giving no comments. But what citizens of an “independent” republic where forced ukrainization, moral, psychological, and legal suppression of national minorities has been made a principle of national policy may complain of? Of course, of closing Russian-language schools, of banishing Russian language from the republic’s social and political life, of sacking on nationalistic grounds. Also, they complain of the arbitrariness of the “independent” courts which stay indifferent to the woes of the Russian-speaking population making up nearly a quarter of the republic’s entire population. Ultimately, they complain of the policy of apartheid and racism conducted by Mr. Kuchma’s regime with the connivance of the European rights-protection agencies.