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News Monitor for Ukraine: December 2000 to February 2003

Ukaine ratified the Genocide Convention on November 15, 1954.
Ukraine became a party to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 on August 8, 1954 and ratified the Additional Geneva Protocols of 1977 on Jnuary 25, 1990.
Ukraine signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on Janurary 20, 2000, but has not ratified the Statute.

Tracking current news on genocide and items related to past and present ethnic, national, racial and religious violence.
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Tico Times (Costa Rica) 8 Dec 2000 Suspected Nazi War Criminal Ordered to Go By Lauren Wolkoff Tico Times Staff After living 16 years in Costa Rica, suspected Nazi war criminal Bhodan Koziy has been officially ordered to leave the country by a recent appeals court order. In giving Koziy his walking papers last week, the judges finalized a government decision emitted last February and dismissed an earlier appeal filed by the Ukrainian-born suspect's legal counsel. However, judicial sources said that Koziy, 78, could still appeal to the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) to avoid leaving, or at least prolong his stay here. Attorney Ademar Alfaro — a retired employee of Costa Rica's Judicial Branch who is now part of the legal team representing Koziy -- told The Tico Times this week that the lawyers have filed a motion with the appeals court seeking to clarify certain fundamental points. "There were some issues with the mechanics of the decision that were not clear," said Alfaro. For example, the expulsion order does not specify where Koziy is to go once he leaves Costa Rica, he said. Alfaro declined to say more about the case, or about the possibility of an appeal, saying he wanted to confer with the other lawyers. Koziy has lived in Río Segundo de Alajuela, roughly 20 km northeast of San José, since he was stripped of his naturalized U.S. citizenship in 1984. That citizenship — granted in 1956 because he claimed displaced-person status following World War II — was revoked by the U.S. Justice Department when officials determined that he had been an active member of the Nazi-run Ukrainian Security police and had participated in several murders during the war. As a police officer in the small town of Lysiec near the Carpathian mountain range in central Europe, Koziy was accused of shooting and killing a four-year-old Jewish girl and participating in the murders of more than 100 civilians. U.S. Justice Department officials told The Tico Times in 1985 that the evidence compiled against Koziy — involving videotaped testimony from witnesses to his alleged crimes — was "some of the strongest" presented to the department (TT, Aug.16, 1985). John Russell, of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, said Tuesday that his office has no role in the matter, because the case is entirely in Costa Rica's hands now. "Once he's out of the U.S., we don't care what he does," he said. His office is currently investigating roughly 200 Nazi war criminals thought to be scattered all over the world. Koziy, who has not spoken to the press in years, has all along maintained his innocence, claiming the allegations are a case of mistaken identity. Once, in 1987, he narrowly escaped being extradited to the former Soviet Union under the administration of former President and Nobel Peace laureate Oscar Arias. At the time, the Costa Rican government refused to accept a promise from the U.S.S.R. that Koziy would not be sentenced to death, a punishment that does not exist here (TT, Sept.11, 1987). He has lived here ever since under the rentista residency status. Arias, who was in Brazil this week, failed to respond to a fax sent to his hotel by The Tico Times seeking comment on the news. Fernando Durán, executive director of the Arias Foundation for Peace, said he supports the Arias administration's decision not to extradite Koziy to the Soviet Union in 1987 because of the death penalty issue. Stressing that he was not speaking on Arias' behalf, Durán also said he supports the current administration's decision to expel him, provided it was based on solid judicial information from here and the U.S. "If the Costa Rican authorities are certain that it is not a case of mistaken identity, then it is reasonable that they would make this decision," he said. Koziy's residency in Costa Rica has fueled both national and international letter-writing campaigns and protests over the years by Nazi-hunting groups that have tried to pressure the government to declare Koziy persona non grata. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading international Jewish organization, has been a main player in lobbying officials here to deport Koziy so he can be tried for war crimes by the Ukrainian government. "The decision of the Costa Rican court is a very positive step for justice, which we welcome with deep satisfaction as it marks the culmination of a 16-year battle to expel Koziy from Costa Rica," said the center's director in Israel, Efraim Zuroff, in a statement. "Now we will direct our attention to bringing him to trial, preferably in the Ukraine. . . so that justice can finally be achieved." Rabbi Hersch Spalter, of the orthodox Jewish congregation Beit Manachem, said he is "pleased, but not surprised" by the decision to oust the Ukrainian. "Justice has to be done. I don't see why people shouldn't accept that," he said. Some who have followed the case argue that Koziy has managed to maintain a relatively low profile here because he was not regarded as a "high-level" Nazi criminal. "If he had played in the big league, like [notorious Nazi war criminals] [Adolph] Eichmann or [Joseph] Mengele, it would be a different story," said Harry Wohlstein, a San José attorney who has been involved in the national campaign to expel Koziy. Wohlstein said that claims used to defend Koziy in the past, such as the fact that he is nearly 80 or that the war was a long time ago, have no merit. "This is not about vengeance; this man's life doesn't interest me at all," he said. "This is so people learn about the atrocities that happened so they can never be repeated." San José Archbishop Román Arrieta, one prominent national leader who intervened to prevent Koziy's extradition more than a decade ago and defended him ardently in the press, has since grown quiet. Arrieta said this week that he prefers not to comment on the matter, except to say that he is sure Koziy's attorneys are going to appeal. In 1994, Arrieta told The Tico Times that he was "absolutely convinced of Mr. Koziy's innocence," both from conversations with the accused and from other unspecified documents that proved to him that there was a confusion of identity (TT, June 10, 1994).

BBC 8 January, 2001 Peer calls for probe into Nazi claims Jack Straw has been asked to look into the claims The government has been urged to investigate claims that up to 1,500 members of a former Nazi SS unit are living in Britain. A Labour Party peer has written to Home Secretary Jack Straw asking him to investigate the claim, made in a television documentary. These are people who were involved in mass killing Lord Janner Lord Janner, who is a member of the all-party parliamentary war crimes group, called for any members of Nazi SS units living in Britain to be brought to trial. He said members of the "killer regiment" should not be allowed "to sleep easy in their beds". The ITV television documentary claimed that 1,500 members of a Ukraine-based Nazi SS unit arrived in Britain after World War II. Massacres Lord Janner said the programme "made it quite clear" that hundreds of the men were involved in "the massacres of Ukrainians, and Poles and Jews". Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "These are people who were involved in mass killing who should never have been allowed in and who should be investigated now." Lord Janner said that if there was evidence that anyone who came to Britain after the war had been involved in the massacres they needed to be brought to trial. Lord Janner has asked for an investigation "What we are saying is that if, but only if, there is sufficient evidence against people who were in that killer regiment that they themselves were involved in the massacres then certainly they should be prosecuted because it is criminal." Lord Janner said he had also asked Mr Straw to allow the public to see the evidence for themselves. "Fifty years have now past ... at last there is a right now to see the evidence. "We know that there were files on these people which have been hidden ever since and they shouldn't be any more."

BBC 15 January, 2001, 02:43 GMT Straw targets Nazi suspects The UK's record for investigating war crimes suspects has been criticised Suspected Nazi war criminals living in the UK could be stripped of their nationality before being deported under Home Office plans being considered. Officials have confirmed that Jack Straw is examining the scope of his powers under UK immigration and nationality legislation in relation to individuals suspected of involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Home Secretary is thought to be scrutinising cases in the US and Canada, where 'denaturalisation and deportation' action has been taken against individuals alleged to be Nazi war criminals. A Home Office spokesman said: "He (Mr Straw) is considering the scope of our legislation to see if something similar would be possible here." Difficult to extradite Mr Straw's move coincides with claims that 1,500 members of a Ukrainian Waffen SS division, which massacred civilians in the former Soviet Union and Poland during World War II, are living in the UK. Many of the suspects entered the UK shortly after the war and became British citizens, making it difficult for them to be extradited for trial abroad. The UK has been criticised for being a safe haven for Nazi war crimes suspects, particularly after Jack Straw opted not to detain war crimes suspect Konrad Kalejs. He subsequently left the UK for Australia, where he was eventually arrested. Lord Janner has supported extradition moves Lord Janner, secretary of the Parliamentary All-party War Crimes Group, is among those pressing for all former SS members to be brought to trial. He has also supported the Lithuanian Government's move to extradite Anton Gecas, suspected of Nazi war crimes. Mr Straw would like to make it easier to extradite war crimes suspects, and has asked officials to examine whether he could extend his powers under the 1981 British Nationality Act.

Reuters 26 May 2001 By Andrew Stern U.S. prosecutors will revive the alleged Nazi past of retired auto worker John Demjanjuk in a new trial starting on Tuesday in an Ohio courtroom, arguing that while he may not be the sadistic death camp guard ``Ivan the Terrible,'' he was a henchman in the ``Final Solution.'' Demjanjuk, who is 81 and mentally and physically frail according to his family, could be stripped of his American citizenship for the second time in 20 years and ultimately deported -- possibly to an Ukrainian jail cell. This time, he is accused of being a guard at the Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenburg Nazi concentration camps in Poland and Germany. He is said to have been among captured Ukrainian soldiers who volunteered to be trained for the horrific duty at the Nazi's SS-run Trawniki training facility in Poland. Prosecutors must prove he lied about his Nazi past in 1951 to obtain a U.S. visa for himself and his wife and daughter, basing their case on evidence such as a sworn statement from a now-dead Ukrainian who was a guard at the same Nazi camps. ``Our goal is deportation,'' said a Justice Department (news - web sites) spokesman. Demjanjuk, whose alibi has shifted several times over two decades of accusations, has claimed he was a conscript in the Soviet army captured by the Germans in the Crimea in 1941 who spent much of the war as a prisoner of war. He has said he lied to avoid being returned to the Soviet Union, where he feared he would be persecuted. It was not clear if Demjanjuk will testify at the civil proceeding to be overseen by U.S. District Judge Paul Matia in Cleveland, which could take up to four weeks. Matia will decide the case. Prosecutors were expected to rely on evidence such as a ''protocol'' from fellow-Ukrainian Ignat Danilchenko, who died in Russia in 1985. He recalled ``Dem'yanyuk (sic)'' as an efficient death camp guard who helped round up Jews. Danilchenko cannot be cross-examined on the role of the guards in ``Operation Reinhard,'' the Polish arm of Adolf Hitler's ``Final Solution'' that culminated in the genocide of 6 million Jews. When first denaturalized in 1981, Demjanjuk was identified as the vicious ``Ivan the Terrible'' of Treblinka and was quickly extradited to Israel where he was sentenced to hang for ``crimes against humanity'' in a televised trial that rivaled the sensational 1961 trial of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann. Among the evidence was Demjanjuk's much-scrutinized Trawniki identity card, which the defense argued was a Soviet forgery, and the eyewitness testimony of a series of graying Treblinka survivors. One after another, they pointed at Demjanjuk and identified him as the cruel guard who whipped, gouged and tortured his victims before revving the engines that fed poisonous exhaust into gas chambers where 850,000 mostly Polish Jews died in just 11 months. But documents and sworn statements from Ukrainian Nazi recruits that emerged from the dismantled Soviet Union -- some made available to U.S. prosecutors before the 1981 extradition hearing -- led Israel's Supreme Court to declare Demjanjuk was not ``Ivan the Terrible.'' The Israeli high court, in freeing Demjanjuk in 1993 after seven years in prison, said it suspected he was a camp guard and called his alibi ``a lie.'' ``There's a feeling that everything that could be done, was done, but ultimately the case was too complicated to make it or bring it,'' said Moshe Fox, an Israeli embassy spokesman in Washington. He said ``extradition (to Israel) was not on the table'' at this time. Ukraine also does not want Demjanjuk back, and would probably prosecute him for war crimes if he did return, a Ukrainian government source said. After Israel freed Demjanjuk, the U.S. Justice Department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations was vilified by a U.S. Appeals Court that had approved his extradition, saying prosecutors had behaved ``recklessly'' and perpetrated a ``fraud on the court'' for not disclosing that another man, Ivan Marchenko, was likely the sadistic guard. The whereabouts of Marchenko remain unknown. Demjanjuk is no longer talking, but his lawyer, Michael Tigar recently said Demjanjuk is once again the victim of mistaken identity. Tigar said Ukrainian officials recently interviewed the relative of another ``Ivan'' Demjanjuk born in the same village who was a Nazi guard. Demjanjuk, meanwhile, rarely ventures out of his suburban Seven Hills, Ohio, bungalow, and is said to enjoy watching his six grandchildren play. His son-in-law, Ed Nishik, complains that Demjanjuk has been impoverished and devastated by a persecuting U.S. government. Demjanjuk's $5 million lawsuit against the government was dismissed.

Dawn (Karachi) 3 May 2001 Serbia needs moral cleansing By Eric S. Margolis (Toronto Star) Serbia's reformist prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, says Serbs must bear 'witness to a mad time.' At long last, the truth about Milosevic, who was deposed last October, is beginning to emerge from behind thick clouds of lies and disinformation. Even so, diehard supporters of Milosevic's crypto-fascist regime are busy mounting yet another propaganda offensive to falsely depict Milosevic's Serbia as an innocent victim of western machinations rather than the brutal, racist, criminal state it really was. Milosevic was lately taken to hospital from his comfortable jail cell in Belgrade, suffering from heart problems and, no doubt, the fear that he will be poisoned to silence him. An indicted war criminal, Milosevic was responsible for Europe's worst atrocities since Stalin and Hitler, and four wars that killed 250,000 civilians and left three million homeless. Yet he has only been charged so far with tax evasion and misallocation of state funds. Ironically, Milosevic is likely innocent of the last charge. He recently admitted diverting state funds to secretly finance Serb nationalists, and gangsters like his former ally Arkan, in their campaigns of ethnic terrorism in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The United Nations War Crimes Tribunal demands Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) extradite Milosevic and 22 other indicted Serb war criminals to The Hague to stand trial for atrocities in Kosovo. The UN is also preparing charges against them for crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia, where the number of the dead, tortured, and raped exceeded those in Kosovo. Bodies of Muslims massacred by Serbs in Bosnia during the mid-1990s are still being dug up almost daily. So far, Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslavia's anti-western federal president, has refused to comply with the UN warrant, though he did jail Milosevic for 30 days in order to receive US $50 million in desperately needed funds from Washington. Support for Milosevic remains strong in Serbia, particularly in the army, which is still commanded by Milosevic loyalists, and among farmers. Serb democratic reformers must tread lightly lest they provoke a counter-coup by hardliners, among whom are many senior officials who grew rich because of corruption and the black market. Kostunica's hold on power remains shaky in spite of the West's ill-advised efforts to shore him up as the new 'stabilizer' of the Balkans. While many Serbs are understandably reluctant to see the full spectrum of Milosevic's crimes revealed, there are plenty of American and European officials and politicians who do not want their long collaboration with the criminal Milosevic regime revealed. Were Milosevic tried in The Hague, the world would discover that: France secretly passed top secret information to Belgrade before and during NATO's 1999 military action against Yugoslavia; Britain and Canada repeatedly thwarted military action by NATO to stop ethnic massacres in Bosnia; Greece and Cyprus helped finance the Milosevic regime and busted NATO's embargo of Yugoslavia; and Britain and France sought to block German influence in the Balkans by aiding Serbia. It would also know that: western powers conspired to deny independence to Montenegro; Italy's socialist government played a key role in saving the Milosevic regime from bankruptcy in 1996 by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Serbia; Russia and Ukraine broke the UN embargo, supplying Serbia with arms, oil, and soldiers; America's Balkan proconsul Richard Holbrooke helped legitimize and sustain the Milosevic regime; Milosevic and the late Croat leader, Franjo Tudjman, conspired to divide Bosnia. In other words, the long, sordid, cynical, saga of the West's preservation of the Milosevic regime in order to maintain the Balkan status quo. And the UN's own disgraceful record in Bosnia of putting the charade of 'peacekeeping' before saving of human lives and stopping crimes against humanity. And the policy of appeasement championed by Britain's left-leaning Lord Owen, and Canada's own leading Milosevic apologist, Lewis Mackenzie. The western powers must keep intense pressure on Yugoslavia to hand Milosevic, and his baleful wife and eminence noire, Mirjana, the president of Serbia, and other war criminals to justice in The Hague. Unless they do this, Serb democrats like Zoran Djindjic and his youthful, educated supporters will be undermined. Djindjic, who is locked in rivalry for power with Kostunica, is the best man to lead his nation and deserves much stronger western support. Before Serbia can rejoin the family of democratic nations, it must thoroughly purge itself of the evil notions of its crypto-nazi nationalists: Greater Serbia, Slav racial purity, an Orthodox crusade against Islam, Serb 'lebensraum.' Kostunica has called for a 'national catharsis.' This won't work until Serb nationalist-extremists and ordinary citizens face the truth and atone for their past, as Germans have successfully done, stop blaming others for their largely self-inflicted misfortunes, and cease threatening the lives of journalists at home and abroad. Many Serbs now blame Milosevic for losing four wars. But not, it seems, for unleashing a storm of Nazi-style hatred and racism. Serbia's national catharsis is yet to be accomplished.-Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2001 http://www.foreigncorrespondent.com/archive/serbia_needs.html

BBC 19 June, 2001, Hungary 'Status Law' irks neighbours The Hungarian parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a new law aimed at helping more than three million ethnic Hungarians who live in neighbouring countries to work and study in Hungary. Hungarians abroad Croatia - 25,000 Romania - 1.7m Slovakia - 600,000 Slovenia - 10,000 Ukraine - 125,000 Yugoslavia - 340,000 The conservative government, which sponsored the bill, said the legislation will help to protect the cultural identity of Hungarian minorities in the lands where they have lived for centuries. But the law has been sharply criticised both by part of the domestic opposition and by foreign governments who say it meddles in their affairs, and differentiates among their citizens on the basis of ethnic background. Under the so-called Status Law, Hungarians living in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia and Slovenia will be entitled to a special identity document proving that they are Hungarian and allowing them to work in Hungary for three months each year. Higher wages The Romanian Government issued a statement on Tuesday describing the law as "discriminatory" and "contrary to the European spirit". A bell of mourning for territory Hungary lost in 1920 The Slovak Government said "intensive further consultations" were needed before the law was implemented. Ethnic Hungarians issued with the identity card will have to pay tax and make national insurance contributions on any income earned in Hungary but will qualify for free health care and improved rights to study. The BBC's Central Europe correspondent, Nick Thorpe, says the law has gained widespread support among ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries. He says tens of thousands of them already work illegally in Hungary, attracted by higher wages than they can usually earn at home. Austria dropped The law applies to ethnic Hungarians in six neighbouring countries, but Austria was dropped from the list after the EU objected. The plaque says: Sweet Homeland Hungary A spokesman for the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Gabor Horvath, said the EU apparently had no further objections to the law once references to Austria had been dropped. However, the Romanian Foreign Ministry said Austria's exclusion indicated that the law was not compatible with "the European spirit". The opposition Socialist Party supported the bill in its final form but the Alliance of Free Democrats opposed it. A deputy for the Alliance of Free Democrats, Matyah Oershi, said the law would encourage ethnic Hungarians living abroad to leave their homelands and emigrate to Hungary. However, the Hungarian Government - which estimates that 25% of ethnic Hungarians would like to emigrate to Hungary - says the law should have the opposite effect. The large overseas diaspora came about when Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory in the Treaty of Trianon after World War I.

BBC 25 June, 2001, The Pope has been focusing on reconciliation and unity Pope John Paul has visited Babi Yar on the outskirts of Kiev where more than 100,000 people - mostly Jews - were shot by Nazi forces 60 years ago. On the third day of his visit to Ukraine, the pontiff stopped and prayed briefly at the site of the massacre, which has become a place of pilgrimage for Jews the world over. My heartfelt hope is Ukraine will continue to draw strength from the ideals of personal, social and Church morality Pope John Paul Earlier, he had celebrated an open air Eastern Rite mass for Greek Catholics at Chaika airport on the western outskirts of the capital. It was the first religious ceremony celebrated by the Pope following the Eastern liturgy. As with a Latin mass held on Sunday the turnout for the mass was low - estimates put the congregation at about 50,000 people, falling far short of the 200,000 predicted. Organisers again blamed poor weather, stringent security and difficult travel arrangements. Fighting corruption Speaking fluent Ukrainian, the Pope urged his followers to relish their post-Communist freedom, but also to tackle the widespread corruption that has come with it. The visit is unpopular with the Orthodox church "My heartfelt hope is Ukraine will continue to draw strength from the ideals of personal, social and Church morality," he said. The BBC's David Willey, who is travelling with the Pope, says that John Paul has made reconciliation and unity between all religions the focus of this visit. He paid tribute on Sunday to believers of Islam, Christianity and Judaism who suffered under totalitarianism, referring in particular to the massacre at Babi Yar, a ravine where the Nazis gunned down Jews and others beginning in September 1941. "May the memory of this episode of murderous frenzy be a salutary warning to all," he said. "What atrocities is man capable of when he fools himself into thinking that he can do without God." Catholic heartland However, Jewish leaders world-wide have voiced dissatisfaction with the Vatican for failing to condemn more strongly what they see as the Roman Catholic Church's passive role during the Holocaust. Later on Monday, the pontiff will go to the western city of Lviv, the heartland of Ukrainian Catholicism. A great turnout is expected in Lviv A large turnout is expected there, for the beatification of 27 Soviet-era Catholic martyrs, putting them on the road to sainthood. On Sunday, the Pope received another snub from Orthodox leaders, who boycotted an inter-faith meeting he attended. Only hours earlier, the pontiff had appealed to Orthodox and Catholic Christians to put aside their differences. Leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow have been highly critical of the Pope's visit, but the pontiff has given assurances that he is not seeking converts.

WP 2 July 2001 For Israelis, Lost Dreams of a Peaceful Future Palestinian Uprising Is a Rude Awakening for Many Who Thought Conflict Was Past By Lee Hockstader, Page A01 JERUSALEM -- Lisa Shimoni flipped through the sales brochures, scanned the landscape and liked what she saw: The cranes rising over the gentle hills of Modiin were erecting "Israel's City of the Future," and Shimoni wanted a piece of it. It was 1995, and to Shimoni, an American-born Web site designer, the Israel of the future seemed an excellent place to be. Israeli and Palestinian leaders had recently collected their Nobel Peace Prizes. Cash-happy Israelis were delighting in a high-tech boom. If Israel had a grim past, saddled with a war every decade, that was then. Modiin, a planned city of peace, harmony and trim green lawns, was now. So what if Palestinian territory started a half-mile away, so close that an Arab beekeeper's honeybees buzzed around the swimming pool where Shimoni's kids would splash? In the past nine months, Shimoni has undergone a rude awakening, as has much of Israel. The Palestinian armed revolt that began last September punctured the rosy Israeli future for which Modiin was a happy emblem. Instead of the cherished Israeli dream -- of a normal and, above all, placid future -- the uprising has left a tableau of fear, fury and denial. "If you had to use one word to describe the Israel of the 21st century, it was 'normalized,' and this has been lost," said Nahum Barnea, a veteran columnist for Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth. "Now there is pressure and confusion. And there is no solution in sight." The violence has revived the specter of a jumpy, hand-wringing existence that many Israelis thought was past. Born at mid-century, Israel for years imagined itself as a fortress -- surrounded by enemies, friendless in the world and living in fear of annihilation, an atmosphere captured in a 1970s pop anthem, "The Whole World Is Against Us." A glimpse of normality came in the 1990s. The end of the Cold War and the Israeli-Palestinian peace deal at Oslo in 1993, followed by a formal peace with Jordan, contributed to a new outlook. Many Israelis were optimistic about the future and relatively unburdened by the past. A million new Russian-speaking immigrants, and even more Israeli-born youths -- perhaps half the country in all -- had no palpable memory of an Israeli war. Now the assumptions of just a few years ago have been turned on their heads. Today, the national bus company, Egged, is armor-plating buses in Jerusalem, and the police are scrambling to obtain more robots programmed to dismantle bombs. Immigration has dipped sharply, tourists are scarce, and sales of sedatives have soared. The country feels, if not under siege, then perhaps like a pressure cooker. In most measurable ways, however, the Israelis' predicament is much less dire than that of the Palestinians. Nearly five times more Palestinians than Israelis have died violently since last fall, and many times more have been injured. Israel's boom economy has slowed, but the Palestinians' far more fragile economy has buckled. Israelis worry about which roads are safe, but many Palestinians are confined by Israeli army blockades of their towns and villages, barred from using major roads at all. On both sides, hopes for peace have been dashed. In late 1995, half of all Israelis believed peace with the Palestinians was on the way; today an equal percentage doesn't feel safe going to the mall, according to a survey of Israeli attitudes conducted by Tel Aviv University. In a Gallup poll published this month in the newspaper Maariv, 17 percent acknowledged they were thinking of leaving the country, an astonishing admission in a nation of immigrants where emigration is widely stigmatized. Lisa Shimoni says she is not leaving, but she has retooled her expectations. So has Roy Cohen, a teenager heading for the army who once counted Palestinians among his closest friends and now is struggling to keep them. And so has Galina Nussbaum, an immigrant from Ukraine, who continues to defiantly visit the mall recently rocked by a suicide bomber. Like many Israelis, their lives reflect a country deeply torn by a conflict for which there appears to be no peace, no victory and no end. Two Worlds For years, Shimoni felt sure the strife with the Palestinians could be massaged -- "they're people; we're people" -- given time and wise leadership. Her attentions were focused not on Israel's Arab neighbors but on the future. Israelis were getting rich by hooking up to the global economy, outstripping even European countries in Internet connectivity, personal computer ownership and use of cellular phones. Ownership of private cars, considered a luxury by Israelis as late as the 1980s, nearly doubled in the 1990s; overseas trips quadrupled. The ultimate affirmation of newly found normality arrived a few months after the Oslo peace accord: McDonald's opened its first restaurant here. It has since opened 84 more. And so Shimoni, 37, and her husband moved to Modiin, with its tidy streets and whirring sprinklers. But instead of an oasis of calm halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Modiin now feels like what Israelis call a "confrontation-line community." Pale, open and earnest, Shimoni is even-keeled and disinclined to hysteria, and she chooses her words with care. Still, she makes no effort to hide her dejection and disillusionment. To cope, she lives in parallel mental worlds, she says: the "insular world of work and family and . . . the outside world of terrorists and funerals." She shuttles uneasily between the two, but even her insular world is not entirely insular. From the swimming pool where she takes her children, she can glance across the perimeter fence into the Arab village of Beit Sirah, just beyond the Green Line in Palestinian territory. Israeli newspapers have reported that the religious leader at Beit Sirah's mosque has publicly endorsed the killing of Jews. "It's a reminder that we're really near to an enemy, though we didn't used to think of them as an enemy," Shimoni said the other day, seated in her comfortable living room, whose bright windows provide a clear view of Beit Sirah. "It comes down to frame of mind. The question is whether you're going to focus on what's over the fence, or whether you're going to focus on the kids splashing in the pool." She worries about shielding her four children, not only from physical harm but also from the pervasive talk of violence and death. Four-year-old Gilad's preschool teacher was shaken for days when a bomb exploded outside a restaurant near Tel Aviv where she was eating not long ago. Ten-year-old Maytal's drama instructor canceled class after she narrowly avoided being injured by a bombing in Jerusalem last month. And she worries about her husband, Giora, who commutes to work on Route 443, which cuts through Palestinian territory to Jerusalem. When the violence erupted, the thoroughfare became a shooting gallery for Palestinian gunmen firing on Israeli cars. Work has not provided much respite. Shimoni runs an Internet forum on Israel and Judaism. It was raided a few months ago by Arabs from the West Bank and Jordan. They attacked Israel as a racist state and accused it of atrocities in its occupation of Palestinian land. The tone of the forum, which had once been a repository for bland tips for traveling in Israel, kosher cooking and Jewish customs, suddenly turned violent. Shimoni once believed in peace and a deal with the Palestinians. She doesn't anymore. The bombs and gunfire, the vehemence of Arab rhetoric and a rash of anti-Semitic incidents worldwide have all moved her toward Israel's nationalist camp. Like many Israelis, and like the hard-line government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Shimoni is in no mood to negotiate under fire. "There were always incidents here, but it was like random crimes in the United States, like some guy walking into McDonald's or the post office with a rifle," she said. "Now, though, it's different. It's more like a guerrilla war." 'Reality Has Failed' He might be any Israeli teenager on the verge of his army service, a tall, skinny, shambling kid with dusky eyes and a quick smile and a patter so disarmingly flirtatious that the waitress in the mall, his high school classmate, is reduced to a paroxysm of giggles. But Roy Cohen has a secret -- not a secret exactly, but knowledge and experience very few Israelis share. Some of Roy's closest friends are Palestinians. And for a 17-year-old Israeli who has known all his life that he would be drafted at age 18, and who happens to think Israel faces a dire threat from its neighbors, having Palestinian friends means having a serious problem. For instance: How do you react when one of your best Palestinian friends is shot to death by Israeli police? And how do you respond when your best Israeli friend says the only way to deal with the Palestinians is to wage all-out war on them? The son of immigrants from Spain and Algeria, Roy is too easygoing and levelheaded to crumble under the weight of those questions. Still, the nine months of armed Palestinian revolt have touched him more personally than they have his friends and neighbors in the Israeli port city of Ashdod. And the strain is evident. "At school, my [Israeli] friends would say, 'Hey, look at your [Palestinian] friends, you see what they're doing on TV?' " Roy says. "It was a common thing -- you know, they'd say it with a wink, they said it kind of kidding. But they weren't kidding in a way." Roy met his Palestinian friends through Seeds of Peace, a U.S. program designed to bring Israeli and Arab teenagers together in the most neutral and stress-free environment imaginable: a woodsy summer camp in Maine. For three summers, until 1999, he bunked and played with Palestinian kids and endlessly hashed over the Arab-Jewish conflict with them. Roy's summer friendships were cemented during the school year at the Seeds center in Jerusalem. One of his closest friends was Asel Asleh, a Palestinian from northern Israel with a knack for computers. Another was a girl named Rasha from the West Bank town of Ramallah, whom Roy admired for her determination to insulate her friendships from politics. In the first days of the Palestinian revolt, Asel was killed by Israeli police during a demonstration. Arab witnesses told an Israeli commission of inquiry that he was shot in the neck at close range as he lay wounded on the ground. The police offered no contradictory testimony. Shortly afterward, Rasha broke off contact with Roy. She had told him about Israeli attacks on Palestinian towns, and about her young cousin who was killed at a demonstration. Even by talking to him on the phone, she said, she felt she was betraying her people. At first it seemed to Roy that everything Seeds represented had failed -- that his idea of what could or should be normal friendship between Arabs and Jews had become impossible. Then he reassessed. "I don't feel Seeds has failed," he said. "I think reality has failed." The violence remains abstract for most of Roy's friends in Ashdod, which has been unscathed so far by bombs and bloodshed. With dozens of radio and television channels to choose from and money to spend, many Israelis no longer live from one news bulletin to the next. These days, Israeli channel-surfers are flocking to a new soap opera called "A Touch of Happiness." And when a crowd of 400,000 people swarmed into Tel Aviv's main square last month, they were demanding neither war nor peace but celebrating an Israeli team's victory in the European basketball championships. Meanwhile, Roy is preparing for the army. He knows that the moment he pulls on his olive-drab uniform, his closest Palestinian friends will see him as the enemy. But he also knows that for him, it's the right thing to do. "It's not patriotism, it's realism," he said. "We're under attack." Abiding such contradictions -- even when it means keeping internal turmoil to yourself -- has become part of growing up. "You can't come up to someone who's in pain or has heard of a bombing or has seen something awful on TV, or who's living in fear, and tell them it's not okay to say this or that because not all Palestinians are like that. It doesn't help," Roy said. "But I can't say it doesn't bother me. Because I do know Palestinians who, if they got killed, it would be the end of the world for me." 'I'm No Hero' Disappointment clouded Galina Nussbaum's face as she glanced around the mall in Netanya, a sweltering Mediterranean coastal resort north of Tel Aviv. At mid-afternoon, her favorite coffee shop was practically empty. "It used to be full here," said Nussbaum, the dismay evident in her Russian-accented Hebrew. "Usually I'd be sitting here waving hello to everyone." The crowds at the coffee shop have thinned since a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the mall's entrance, killing five Israelis and wounding dozens. Still, Nussbaum insists on meeting visitors at the mall. She wants to make a point. She is 48 years old, an immigrant from Ukraine, single, independent and proud to have made it in her adoptive country. Like many who arrived on the last decade's tidal wave of post-Soviet immigration, Nussbaum had given little thought to the Arab-Jewish conflict. She came to Israel to escape the anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union, not to become entangled in a new country's thorny disputes. Understated and polite, she has little of the brash intensity of native Israelis, and is uncomfortable discussing politics. She renders her political opinions curtly, her arms folded across her chest. But Israel's anxieties are all around her, infecting conversations and playing on nerves. Although she is loath to admit it, the past months' violence has dented Nussbaum's conviction that her new country is as comfortable a place to be as "your own skin." "Yesterday we were sitting in a coffee shop and this guy walked by with a big bag, and I saw my friend start to stare," she said. "So I said, 'What, is he so good-looking?' She said, 'No, it's because of the bag.' " In Netanya, where Nussbaum has lived since arriving in Israel, fate has favored her more than once. Ten miles from the border separating the Jewish state from Palestinian-ruled territory, Netanya is a favorite target of Palestinian militants. Six bombs have blown up there this year alone, leaving eight Israelis dead and nearly 200 wounded. A few months ago, Nussbaum walked past the city's outdoor produce market 10 minutes before a bomb went off. This spring, a car bomb exploded outside a school where she had attended a meeting an hour earlier. "These days it seems like I pass by just before or after an explosion," she said. On the night of a suicide attack that killed 20 Israelis at a Tel Aviv disco a month ago, Nussbaum surfed from one news channel to another, transfixed by the jumpy hand-held camera footage of severed limbs and sobbing teens. The coverage was gruesome and repetitive, but she couldn't turn it off. Nearly all the casualties were Russian-speaking teenagers, the same age and ethnicity as the high school students she counsels for a living. Watching the news most of the night "was one way I could participate in this terrible pain, take part in it," she said. "If there are bombs, you're afraid, but it doesn't mean you pack up and leave. One of my students said to me, 'We've just arrived here, we're the first generation of immigrants, no one will kick us out of here by force.' "And I agree: If this is going to be a test of strength, then we're the ones who are stronger." Nussbaum knows little of the Palestinians' grievances, and cannot conceive of why they regard Israel as a brutal occupying power. She sees Israel as a blameless victim; Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, whom she calls a "criminal and a bastard," is, for her, the exclusive villain. Nussbaum spent years learning Hebrew, restarting her life and establishing a career as a social worker in the schools. It was a struggle to find a groove in Israel. Now that she has found one, she is determined not to let suicide bombers spoil it. "For me, it's harder to get on a plane than to go to the mall," she said. "If I have to do something in the mall, I do it. I don't think it's such a big deal to go to the mall. I'm no hero for going to the mall."

AP 30 Sept 2001 Ukraine Marks Holocaust Anniversary By MARINA SYSOEVA, KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - President Leonid Kuchma, marking the 60th anniversary of the Babi Yar Holocaust massacre on Sunday, urged all nations to contribute to the development of humanity and to live in peace. ``Every nation can bring its contribution into mankind's development,'' Kuchma said after unveiling a monument to children killed at Babi Yar. ``There cannot be anybody superior or anybody inferior.'' The bronze monument includes figures of abandoned and broken dolls, symbolizing the fate of the estimated 40,000 Jewish children killed at Babi Yar. ``We have no right to forget anything and will do all possible not to repeat the tragedy anywhere on the planet,'' said Kiev Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko. The Babi Yar massacre began in late September 1941 when Nazi forces occupying Kiev ordered its Jews to gather, bringing their warm clothes and valuables - as if they were to be taken elsewhere. The Jews were then marched to the steep Babi Yar ravine and systematically shot. More than 33,000 Jews were killed over just a few days. Altogether, between 100,000 and 200,000 people - including non-Jews - are believed to have been killed at Babi Yar. Dozens of people, including elderly Babi Yar survivors and representatives of Jewish associations from abroad, attended the ceremony. ``It's unbelievable,'' said Arlene Hershgold, who came from Seattle, looking upset and fighting back tears. Kuchma and other officials, including foreign diplomats, laid wreaths at the memorial and unveiled a cornerstone for a Jewish Heritage community center that will include history museums of Jewish people and the Babi Yar massacre. ``This museum will show that we are alive and that we will live,'' said Ilia Levitas, head of the Ukrainian Jewish Council. Babi Yar came to symbolize Soviet attempts to suppress Jewish identity. When a memorial to victims was finally erected there in 1966, it mentioned only ``citizens of Kiev and prisoners of war,'' but not Jews. In 1991, Jewish groups erected their own memorial, a 10-foot menorah less than a mile away from the Soviet monument. ``Jewish life is thriving anew in Ukraine, despite the brutality of the Nazi excesses, and despite the repression of Communism,'' said Gene Ribakoff, president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee that helps the Jewish community in Ukraine.

BBC 10 Dec 2001 Analysis: Defining genocide - The term genocide was coined during the Holocaust. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been charged with genocide in Bosnia in 1992-1995. It is the third and most serious indictment against Mr Milosevic, who has already been charged with other alleged war crimes in Kosovo and Croatia. It is also a serious test for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Milosevic: Accused of genocide As defined by the United Nations in 1948, genocide has turned out to be difficult to prove. So far, eight people have been convicted for their role in the Rwandan genocide, one for the war in Bosnia. But what is genocide and when can it be applied? Some argue that the definition is too narrow and others that the term is devalued by misuse. UN definition The term was coined in 1943 by the Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who combined the Greek word "genos" (race or tribe) with the Latin word "cide" (to kill). After witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust - in which every member of his family except his brother and himself was killed - Dr Lemkin campaigned to have genocide recognised as a crime under international law. His efforts gave way to the adoption of the UN Convention on Genocide in December 1948, which came into effect in January 1951. Article Two of the convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group The convention also imposes a general duty on states that are signatories to "prevent and to punish" genocide. Ever since its adoption, the UN treaty has come under fire from different sides, mostly by people frustrated with the difficulty of applying it to different cases. 'Too narrow' Some analysts argue that the definition is so narrow that none of the mass killings perpetrated since the treaty's adoption would fall under it. The objections most frequently raised against the treaty include: The convention excludes targeted political and social groups The definition is limited to direct acts against people, and excludes acts against the environment which sustains them or their cultural distinctiveness Proving intention beyond reasonable doubt is extremely difficult UN member states are hesitant to single out other members or intervene, as was the case in Rwanda There is no body of international law to clarify the parameters of the convention (though this is changing as UN war crimes tribunals issue indictments) The difficulty of defining or measuring "in part", and establishing how many deaths equal genocide But in spite of these criticisms, there are many who say genocide is recognisable. In his book Rwanda and Genocide in the 20th Century, former secretary-general of Doctors Without Borders, Alain Destexhe says: "Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it. "Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group. "Genocide is therefore both the gravest and greatest of the crimes against humanity." Loss of meaning Mr Destexhe believes the word genocide has fallen victim to "a sort of verbal inflation, in much the same way as happened with the word fascist". Eight people have been convicted for the Rwandan genocide Because of that, he says, the term has progressively lost its initial meaning and is becoming "dangerously commonplace". Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, agrees. "Those who should use the word genocide never let it slip their mouths. Those who unfortunately do use it, banalise it into a validation of every kind of victimhood," he said in a lecture about Raphael Lemkin last year. "Slavery for example, is called genocide when - whatever it was, and it was an infamy - it was a system to exploit, rather than to exterminate the living." The differences over how genocide should be defined, lead also to disagreement on how many genocides actually occurred during the 20th Century. History of genocide Some say there was only one genocide in the last century - the Holocaust. Prosecutors in The Hague presented evidence to back genocide charges Other experts give a long list of what they consider cases of genocide, including the Soviet man-made famine of Ukraine (1932-33), the Indonesian invasion of East Timor (1975), and the Khmer Rouge killings in Cambodia in the 1970s. However, some say there have been at least three genocides under the 1948 UN convention: The mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks between 1915-1920 - an accusation that the Turks deny The Holocaust, during which more than six million Jews were killed Rwanda, where an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in the 1994 genocide In the case of Bosnia, many believe that massacres ocurred as part of a pattern of genocide, though some doubt that intent can be proved in Mr Milosevic's case The first case to put into practice the convention on genocide was that of Jean Paul Akayesu, the Hutu mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba at the time of the killings. In a landmark ruling, a special international tribunal convicted him of genocide and crimes against humanity on 2 September 1998. Seven other Rwandans have since been convicted of genocide. Earlier this year, the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia handed down its first sentence for the crime of genocide, when it found General Radislav Krstic guilty of killing up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. Two other Bosnian Serbs, General Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, have also been accused of genocide by the tribunal - both remain at large. Now, Slobodan Milosevic faces charges of genocide and complicity to commit genocide for alleged crimes in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war. He is set to go on trial next year. Mr Milosevic is accused of having "participated in a joint criminal enterprise, the purpose of which was the forcible and permanent removal of the majority of non-Serbs from large areas of the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina". Being the most prominent European to face a war crimes court since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders at the end of World War II, campaigners hope his trial will set an important precedent.

AP 15 Apr 2002 Ukrainian Jews set upon in synagogue attack By Tim Vickery, The Associated Press KIEV (April 15) – About 50 youths attacked the central synagogue here, beating a rabbi and two others with stones, hurling bottles, and destroying property, the rabbi said Sunday. Kiev Chief Rabbi Moshe-Reuven Azman said the mob marched down the Ukraine capital's main boulevard shouting "Kill the Jews!" before attacking the synagogue just after 9 p.m. Saturday. The incident occurred after services, and many worshipers had already left the building. Police denied it was an anti-Semitic attack, saying it was a case of soccer-related hooliganism. A soccer game had just ended at nearby Dinamo stadium. Azman said the youths knocked Tzvi Kaplan, rector of Kiev’s yeshiva, to the ground and beat him with stones. Kaplan was hospitalized overnight but was released Sunday. Azman’s 14-year-old son and a security guard also suffered injuries, he said. "I call this act a pogrom," Azman said. "It's a miracle it wasn't worse." Azman said the attackers broke 20 windows in the synagogue. Broken glass covered the floor of the synagogue Sunday, and police stood guard outside the building.

RFE/RL 19 June 2002 Hungary: Six-Month-Old Status Law Attracts Few Applicants, Much Trouble By Eugen Tomiuc The Hungarian law granting economic, cultural, and education benefits to ethnic Hungarians living abroad has been in force for almost six months. But the number of ethnic Hungarians applying for benefits granted by the Status Law has been relatively low. The law caused friction between Hungary and some of its neighbors, chiefly Romania and Slovakia. Hungary last year signed a memorandum with Romania on how to implement the law but still has to reach agreement with Slovakia. Now, Hungary's new Socialist government says it is considering amending the law and says it is ready to hold new talks with its neighbors. Prague, 19 June 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Six months after coming into force, a Hungarian law that enables ethnic Hungarians living abroad to enjoy some economic, cultural, and education benefits has attracted a relatively low number of applicants. Furthermore, the Law on Hungarians Living in Neighboring Countries -- the Status Law -- continues to cause various levels of disagreement between Budapest and its neighbors Slovakia and Romania, which are host to Europe's largest ethnic Hungarian minorities. The law was conceived by former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's center-right government and was passed by parliament last June. Analysts say the law was meant as an incentive for ethnic Hungarians to remain in their countries of origin once Hungary, which is a front-runner among candidates for European Union admission, becomes an EU member in 2004. It allows Hungarian minorities in five neighboring countries (Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and Slovenia) to receive an annual three-month work permit in Hungary, as well as medical care and pension benefits while on Hungarian territory. Budapest also pledges to support the development of Hungarian higher-education facilities abroad and to grant ethnic Hungarian families living outside Hungary an annual allowance to educate their children in Hungarian. Some 3.5 million ethnic Hungarians live in the five countries, most of them in Romania, which has some 1.7 million, and Slovakia, with 600,000. Hungarian officials say that after six months, just over 10 percent of ethnic Hungarians living abroad have applied for the identification card that gives them the right to enjoy the benefits. Tamas Toth is a spokesman for the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. "More than 400,000 Hungarians living abroad have requested the so-called Hungarian ID. So I think this number shows the interest that really exists in ethnic Hungarians living abroad toward the law," Toth said. Romania and Slovakia last year criticized some of the law's provisions, which they said were extraterritorial, and argued that a measure passed by Hungary cannot be enforced on the territory of other states. However, Romania subsequently signed a memorandum in December with Hungary, agreeing to allow some organizations, including Romania's ethnic Hungarian party, UDMR, to gather applications from ethnic Hungarians and to send them to Hungary for processing. But it requested that such organizations have the limited role of a go-between and that the procedure for obtaining the ID -- receiving of applications, issuing, and forwarding -- take place primarily on Hungarian territory. Hungary in the memorandum also agreed to allow all Romanian citizens, regardless of their ethnic origin, to apply for work permits within its territory. UDMR says that, according to its centralized data, only some 225,000 applications were received during the past six months, i.e., less than 14 percent of Romania's ethnic Hungarians. It says that in the first two months, an unexpectedly high number of applications -- 13,000 to 15,000 weekly -- overwhelmed the Hungarian processing system, causing long delays and disappointment among applicants. But ethnic Hungarians' interest in the law has consequently dropped abruptly, a trend the UDMR says can be partially explained by the beginning of farming season in Romania's rural areas with ethnic Hungarian populations. Slovakia has said it is not against its ethnic Hungarian citizens benefiting from the law on Hungarian territory. But unlike Romania, Slovakia has not allowed any ethnic Hungarian organizations in Slovakia to gather and send applications to Hungary. Slovak Deputy Foreign Minister Jaroslav Chlebo told RFE/RL that Bratislava wants only Hungarian diplomatic missions, and not ethnic Hungarian associations in Slovakia, to deal with the applications. "The dissemination and collection and then sending of the application [forms] of those who want to apply for the identity cards to the Hungarian authorities -- this must be conducted either by the Hungarian embassy here in Bratislava or the [Hungarian] consulate-general in Kosice. Nobody else has got the legitimacy to do so on the territory of the Slovak Republic and definitely not the nongovernmental organizations or associations of ethnic Hungarians here in Slovakia, as they have started to do so," Chlebo said. Chlebo said that, according to what he calls "indirect sources," some 35,000 ethnic Hungarians from Slovakia -- some 6 percent -- have applied for the Hungarian ID so far. Chlebo said Bratislava is awaiting Hungary's official response to the Slovak proposals, but points to the fact that the law is against European and international norms on the protection of ethnic minorities. The Status Law originally included Hungarians living in Austria -- the only European Union country bordering Hungary -- but subsequently excluded that group to comply with EU rules against ethnic discrimination among EU citizens. Furthermore, the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's chief legal consultative body, last year issued a report saying that the law is not completely in accord with the EU's nondiscriminatory principles. The European Commission in its annual reports last year also said that some regulations adopted by Hungary are in "evident contradiction" to European standards on the protection of minorities. Both Hungary and Slovakia are among a group of 10 candidate countries -- together with Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Cyprus, and Malta -- likely to become EU members in 2004. Romania and Bulgaria are expected to join no sooner than 2007. Hungarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Toth said that since the law does not observe regulations against ethnic discriminations among EU citizens, it will become obsolete once Hungary, along with Slovakia or Slovenia, joins the EU. But Toth told RFE/RL that Budapest must find a mutually acceptable solution with Romania. "There is a major objective of Hungarian foreign policy, that is, the accession to the European Union, which is to be completed by 1 January 2004. So logically, the law's implementation cannot go beyond that date if we suppose that, for example, Slovakia and Hungary will become EU members together. In Slovakian-Hungarian area, I think that is the date as far as the implementation can go. If Romania will not be in the first group of countries acceding to the EU, then of course, we must find a mutually acceptable solution for the law," Toth said. Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy's new Socialist government, which came to power after April's general elections, has said it wants to make changes to the law and restrict the number of work permits available in Hungary for Romanian citizens who are not ethnic Hungarians. But Romania, which is one of Europe's poorest countries, has reacted coolly to the suggestion. Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase yesterday said he expects Hungary's new government to implement the memorandum signed in December. In the memorandum, Romania and Hungary agreed that Budapest will review the Status Law and initiate the necessary amendments after six months. Spokesman Toth said yesterday that the Romanian-Hungarian Interethnic Affairs Committee has begun negotiations to determine what amendments could be added to the law. Toth said Hungary is willing to negotiate the work-permits issue with Romania. "What I can tell you [is] that in a unilateral way, Hungary is not going to take any measures in this case. We are going to negotiate. We would like to negotiate. We would like to put it clearly for every party concerned in this issue that Hungary is ready to negotiate and the [final] position will be formed during those negotiations," Toth said. But Toth said that while the Hungarian government wants a solution acceptable to Romania, it must not jeopardize the stability of Hungary's job market.

WP 28 Jul 2002 Atrocities in Ukraine Sunday, July 28, 2002; Page B06 Thank you for publishing the July 23 front-page story "Soviet-Era Atrocity Unearthed in Ukraine." Sadly, it may have been news to the Western world, especially North America, but it was not in Ukraine. Almost every village there has graves, almost every family an atrocity to tell about. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians could not speak about what they had lived through. Those who had emigrated to the United States after the war, as refugees, were not believed. They were not believed about the genocide by famine of 1932-33, about the annihilation of the intelligentsia and clergy, about the skeletons and skulls surfacing in so many parks and woods, about the deliberate destruction of medieval churches and cultural antiquities. Now the Russians are concerned about the rehabilitation of Ukrainian freedom fighters of World War II? The Russians are also butting in to Ukrainian church affairs and language issues. The Russians should stay out of Ukrainian issues -- during the centuries of occupying Ukraine, they have done more than enough already. ORYSIA TRACZ Winnipeg, Manitoba

Forum, Ukraine 15 Oct 2002 "Kuchma sentenced to life imprisonment" The people’s tribunal staged to judge President Leonid Kuchma last Saturday in the European Square in Kyiv condemned the president and resolved to request the law-enforcement agencies to imprison him for life, according to MP Volodymyr Oliynyk, who chaired the tribunal. Oliynyk said that Kuchma constantly breached the current laws and the Constitution while he was the premier and the president, according to UA TODAY. The tribunal decided to turn to international organizations and foreign countries for moral support and called on the Ukrainian judges “to show patience, not respond to pressure and make decisions for the sake of national interests.” Speaking at the trial, ex MP Viktor Shyshkin accused Kuchma of several crimes, such as being involved in the murder of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze and attempt on the life of ex MP Oleksandr Yelyashkevych, and persecuting opposition leaders. He suggested using the recordings made by ex Major of the Presidential Guards Mykola Melnychenko as material evidence in investigating the crimes. MP Serhiy Holovaty accused Kuchma of controlling the mass media and perpetrating genocide of the Ukrainian people. MP Hryhoriy Omelchenko accused the president of illegally opening bank accounts with Hr2 billion on them. The other deputies and opposition members speaking at the tribunal accused Kuchma of conducting illegitimate arms’ trade with Iraq and putting pressure on the detectives investigating Rukh leader Viacheslav Chornovil’s death. MP Yulia Tymoshenko accused Kuchma of high treason. MP Volodymyr Yavorivsky accused the president of destroying the Ukrainian culture. Upon bringing the charges and pleading the president guilty, the tribunal organizers and participants resolved to demand the General Prosecutor’s Office file a criminal case against Kuchma. According to BYT member Oleksandr Turchynov, 100 thousand copies of this resolution will be spread among Ukrainians and sent out to international organizations very soon. eng.for-ua.com

Edmonton Journal Sunday, November 10, 2002 Agony of Ukraine famine hard for survivors to describe 'More bones, more tragedy' come to light every day: UKRAINIANS REMEMBER Bryant Avery, Journal Staff Writer Survivors of imposed starvation in Ukraine during 1932 and 1933 are dwindling in number now, but evidence is still growing about the genocidal Soviet policy and its catastrophic effect on millions of people. "In life, many things happen and usually you can forget them," Ukrainian Canadian Congress president Mykola Vorotylenko said at the 69th annual memorial service on Saturday. "But every day there are more bones, more evidence, more tragedy." In the mid-'30s, Soviet Union dictator Josef Stalin sent troops into Ukraine to collect 1.7 million tons of grain for lucrative Western markets, causing a massive famine. Vorotylenko's mother survived. "The breadbasket of Europe became one massive graveyard," Congress vice-president Luba Boyko-Bell told the crowd of about 300 at a sombre service in City Hall and in front of the Ukrainian famine memorial sculpture. The number of people who died is not known, but estimates range from eight million to 10 million. There are now fewer than 100 survivors in the Edmonton area's large Ukrainian community, Vorotylenko said. Teens Krysta Czar and Laryssa Szmihelsky have heard the story many times, in school, home and Saturday language classes. They also attend the remembrance event every year. "It's the same thing over and over," Czar said with a 14-year-old's smile, "but it's also good to be reminded. It's hard to put yourself in their places." Vorotylenko agreed. "For most people, it is difficult to understand how people could eat other people," he said. "But if people don't have any food, their minds go crazy." Vorotylenko emigrated to Canada four years ago and is a safety worker for a petroleum company. Now 46, he recalled how his mother was tight-lipped on the atrocity for years in Ukraine. "She didn't tell me much because it was dangerous to tell," he said. "Somebody did these things, and some of them are still in power. We need to remember that." bavery@thejournal.southam.ca

Jerusalem Post 22 Nov 2002 11 die in Jerusalem bus bombing By ETGAR LEFKOVITS AND MATTHEW GUTMAN A Palestinian suicide bomber boarded a crowded No. 20 Egged bus in Jerusalem's Kiryat Menahem neighborhood during rush hour on Thursday morning and exploded his shrapnel-packed explosive belt, killing 11 people and wounding 48 others. Among the dead were a mother and her son, and a grandmother and her grandson. Four of those killed were children making their way to school. The dead were Hodaya Asraf, 13; Marina Bezersky, 46; Dikla Zino, 20; Sima Novak, 56; Ella Sharshevsky, 44, and her son Michael, 16; Kira Perlman, 67, and her grandson Ilan, eight; Yafit Ravivo, 13; Hadassah (Helena) Ben-David, 32; and Yirga Mersa, 25, a Romanian worker who arrived here five weeks ago. All 11 resided in Ir Ganim, adjacent to Kiryat Menahem. As of Thursday night, 28 victims remained hospitalized, including seven who were listed in serious but stable condition at Hadassah-University Hospital, Ein Kerem. Hamas took credit for the attack, which police said was carried out by Na'el Abu Hilayel, 22, from el-Khader, just south of Bethlehem. Security officials said Hilayel, who was single, had no past security record and was not previously associated with any terrorist organizations. Hours after the 7:15 bombing, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held an emergency session with senior security officials, including Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, to discuss a response. They reportedly agreed to a "wide and extensive operation" that will include sending troops back to Bethlehem from which soldiers withdrew on August 19, as part of an attempt by former defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to encourage the Palestinian Authority to crack down on terrorism. Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Mickey Levy said there had been no specific alerts for the city, although there were "a large number" of general intelligence warnings of future attacks. "During the last two years, Jerusalem has always been at the epicenter of terror alerts and attacks," Insp.-Gen. Shlomo Aharonishky told reporters. "The fact that there have been [almost] four months of quiet [in Jerusalem] has nothing to do with the terrorists' intentions. Not for a moment during this time did we think that the war was over." "In the last few months we lived with the hope that things would quiet down," Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert said, "but we didn't fool ourselves that this would last much longer." "The Palestinian Authority is responsible for initiating, planning, and carrying out acts of terror," he said. "Despite the political differences we might have, it is forbidden for us not for a minute, not for a second to blur this unequivocal and undeniable fact." Several of the victims were buried in the evening. Kira and Ilan Perlman were interred at the Har Menuhot Cemetery in Givat Shaul. Kira made aliya with her family from Russia 10 years ago; Ilan was the pride of the family for being the only member born here. Kira was escorting him to school when they were killed. Sima Novak, 56, was also a recent immigrant. She was on her way to work as a housekeeper in Pisgat Ze'ev. She emigrated eight years ago from Ukraine, where she had worked as a chemistry and biology teacher. As soon as Novak's daughter Svetlana heard the ambulances, she began to suspect something terrible had happened. After turning on the TV, she learned of the attack and immediately worried that her mother was one of the victims. "I began calling all the hospitals, and they said that there was no one by [my mother's] name there. So I decided to go the scene of the attack to try to identify mother," she said. A little later a social worker arrived at her house, and they made the rounds of the area hospitals. It was then that Svetlana received the news. She drove to the L. Greenberg Institute for Forensics Medicine at Abu Kabir, where she identified her mother's body. Novak is to be buried today at noon in Har Hamenuhot. Hodaya Asraf, an eighth grader at an arts school, was the first to be buried, in Har Hamenuhot on Thursday afternoon. "Her friends said the last thing she drew were leaves," said a teacher, Chana Ben-Ya'acov, who attended the funeral. "The leaf has fallen." Thursday was to be a day of art workshops at the art school in Katamon. But instead the students constructed memorials. "She particularly loved to sculpt hands using plaster casts. She also loved sports," a classmate said. Others remembered her as infinitely gentle. "She was the kind of girl who would not harm an ant," said her uncle Albert Asraf. "We always though that this section of the city was safe," said Ariel Gino, 18, who lives across the street from the attack site. "Look, they do this in the city center, in shopping malls, but not in your own backyard," said Ronit Tourgeman, whose daughter Zohar, 13, was wounded. In March, a suicide bomber tried to enter a supermarket in the adjacent neighborhood of Kiryat Hayovel. The impact of that attack was lessened by the bravery of the security guard, who prevented the bomber from entering the store, only to be killed with a young shopper. The last successful attack in Jerusalem was on July 31, when an east Jerusalem-based Hamas cell targeted a cafeteria at the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus, killing nine, including five Americans. The last bus bombing in Jerusalem was near the Patt intersection on June 18; 19 people were killed. It was the 82nd suicide bombing in more than two years of violence.

FP 16 Nov 2002 Russian action in Chechnya likened to genocide THE HAGUE, Nov 15: Russia has played into the hands of militant groups in Chechnya by murdering and torturing civilians in a campaign "bordering on genocide" in the rebel region, a human rights watchdog said on Friday. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), which says it has evidence of murders, torture and rape by Russian forces in Chechnya, urged Moscow to find a political solution to the long-standing conflict. Russia denies its troops have been involved in systematic abuses and says excesses are investigated and punished. It says life is returning to normal in Chechnya despite fresh clashes between its troops and rebels. The watchdog condemned last month's three-day hostage seizure in Moscow by Chechen rebels but said Russia's campaign in the region had only hardened Chechen militancy. "The campaign is driving people into the arms of extremists. The campaign is not a campaign against terrorism. It is a campaign that is generating terrorism. It's a source of terrorism," IHF executive director Aaron Rhodes told a news conference in the Netherlands. The IHF, an alliance of human rights groups in 37 countries, said Russia's Chechen campaign was killing many civilians. "We have characterised this as a process which borders on genocide," Rhodes said. One Moscow-based human rights group, taking part in a two-day IHF general assembly at The Hague, estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 Chechen civilians had been killed by Russian forces since 1999. Moscow's troops are regularly accused by Western governments and human rights groups of looting houses and killing civilians during raids aimed at rooting out rebel fighters. Fewer than 40 servicemen charged with rights violations have been convicted since the present campaign began. A decree issued in March this year by the commander of Russia's forces in Chechnya ordered servicemen to identify themselves and take local officials with them during raids on suspected separatist hideouts, in a bid to curb possible abuse. "The crisis is one of impunity. There is no success in bringing those responsible for human law violations to justice. None at all. Russian institutions have been categorically incapable of undertaking this job," Rhodes said. Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after 20 months of fierce fighting which cost thousands of lives. President Vladimir Putin sent troops back in 1999 after attacks in Dagestan and bomb attacks in Russian cities that Moscow blamed on the rebels. In Brussels this week, Putin pointed to a planned referendum on Chechnya's new constitution to deflect European charges that he was banking all on solving the crisis by force of arms. APPEAL TO UKRAINE: Russia repeated on Friday its demand for Ukrainian authorities to shut down a Chechen rebel information center operating from the southern port city of Odessa, the Russian embassy here said. The Chechen information center has been running for several years with support from Ukraine's nationalist Rukh party, which often takes a hostile view of Moscow and argues that the rebels' information counter-balances biased reports on the war coming from Moscow. Russia and the Chechen guerrillas have been engaged in a bitter propaganda war throughout the three-year conflict in the separatist republic, with Russian security services frequently trying to crack down on rebel Internet sites operating from other regions. The activities "of the information center of the republic of Ichkeria (Chechnya), through its links with the regional Rukh party ... are aimed at giving political and propaganda backing to the terrorists," the Russian embassy statement said. Russia has been repeating its demands for the center to be shut down since last month's terrorist attack on a Moscow theater which 128 civilians died. Ukrainian authorities however respond that no such information center has been officially registered in the republic, and are thus unable to act on Russia's request. REFUGEES: Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Friday that the problem of Chechen refugees who have asked for sanctuary in Kazakhstn was a Russian internal affair and should be dealt with by Moscow. Questioned about a written request by 300 Chechen refugee families in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, bordering Chechnya, in which they asked him for refuge in Kazakshtan, Nazarbayev said Astana had "not received any official letter." The families said their plight in being forced to return from Igushetia to their homeland in Chechnya as "worse than deportation," and urged the Kazakh leader to "save our people from genocide."

NYT January 29, 2003 Mother's Poignant Farewell, as Nazis Brutalize Ukraine By ELVIS MITCHELL Few filmmakers have an appreciation of faces like the documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. His understanding of the strength in a simple image — fixing his camera on a speaking person as the words spill out — amounts to an overwhelming trust in the power of directness. This belief is evident in his wealth of documentaries, pictures that range from his early, innovative works "Titicut Follies" (1967) and "High School" (1968), through later films like "Domestic Violence" (2001). That faith is also the foundation of his riveting and short new fiction film, "The Last Letter," opening today at the Film Forum. Mr. Wiseman has found an actress worthy of that trust in the Comédie-Française's Catherine Samie, whose elegant face and elongated, gaunt cheeks are as eloquent as the previous subjects who have taken their places before Wiseman's camera. He takes full advantage of a luxury — casting — that, until this point, had been left to forces beyond his control, and he proves himself to be as able a selector of talent as Fate. Filmed in black-and-white, "The Last Letter" has a stark premise. Ms. Samie recites a poignant letter written in 1941 by a Jewish woman to her son depicting the destruction of her community after the fall of her tiny Ukrainian town to the Nazis. This story is derived from a chapter in "Life and Fate," Vasily Grossman's epic novel of the Russian struggle against Germany during World War II. Mr. Wiseman is drawn to the same kind of austerity in material here that he has made the foundation of his nonfiction films. Much of the film is Ms. Samie, discoursing in her craggy rasp of a speaking voice, unyielding in its firmness as she recites the vanished pleasures of her life, contrasting them with the mounting inhumanities inflicted by the invaders and, worse, neighbors she thought she knew. "The air is purified," she quotes someone as saying, remarking that it no longer smells of garlic, associated with the Jews. Mr. Wiseman does something new in "Letter": he documents a performer's deftness, and Ms. Samie rises to the occasion by dousing this assessment of her character's former neighbor with pity, instead of making herself an object of sympathy. Though it is a monologue, Mr. Wiseman stylizes "Letter," staging Ms. Samie's entrance with a boldness that he would never use in one of his on-the-fly documentaries. She is captured as a dying essence — her long shadow is cast against a wall. As she goes on, she is dramatically lighted as she is surrounded by a village of her own shadows — four or five figures loom as she delivers speeches about being dehumanized, not overemphasizing the battering her soul is taking. Yet much of "Letter" could be from any Wiseman film, and there are those who find his technique — and unfettered straightforwardness — irritating. Given that "Letter" is a one-woman show that builds not only brick by brick, but through the careful application of mortar, those same people may find this film definitely not suited to them. Like Ms. Samie, Mr. Wiseman is a resolute old hand, and his determination is part of his technique. It is as much a signature as the florid need to jerk tears that other documentary filmmakers find attractive. Mr. Wiseman's stubbornness is manifest in his work, and you will fall for the same quality in "The Last Letter" if you have any affection for his past work. "Letter" is paired with a 10-minute short made in Poland, "Jewish Life in Cracow," in Yiddish with English subtitles. This 1939 film, made before the Nazi invasion of Poland, has the same rapt tone of the nonfiction films that treat their subjects like charming lower forms of life. The narration is simplified to the point of condescension, but there is an ominous quality here. The innocence is about to disappear. An end title reminds us of the atrocities that occurred shortly after "Cracow" was completed. THE LAST LETTER Directed and edited by Frederick Wiseman; written (in French, with English subtitles) by Vasily Grossman, based on his book "Life and Fate"; director of photography, Yorgos Arvantis; produced by Pierre-Olivier Bardet and Idéale Audience and Zipporah Films in association with the Comédie-Française; released by Zipporah Films. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, South Village. Shown with a 10-minute Yiddish-language short, Yitzhak Goskind's "Jewish Life in Cracow" (1939). Running time: 61 minutes. This film is not rated. WITH: Catherine Samie. -

Reuters 4 Feb 2003 Nazi hunters praise new Polish war crimes probes By Reuters WARSAW - Nazi hunters on Tuesday praised Poland's decision to open new war crimes investigations and expressed hope they would at last bring to justice men suspected of the mass murder of Jews in World War Two. Prosecutors launched a probe on Monday into three men, two living in the United States and one in Germany, suspected of committing genocide as SS death camp guards from 1942 to 1944. Another investigation was opened in January by Poland's Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) into another suspect now thought to be in Costa Rica. The IPN investigates crimes committed by the Nazi and communist regimes before 1989. "The renewed judicial activity of the IPN is one of the most positive developments in efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice," Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, told Reuters by telephone. The IPN said it was too early to say if the investigations would lead to the extradition and prosecution of old men suspected of committing war crimes 60 years ago. "If these crimes have not expired under the statute of limitations, we have an obligation to investigate them," said Witold Kulesza, chief IPN war crimes investigator. "But I can't say what chances we have of securing the suspects' extradition." Of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, an estimated three million died in German-occupied Poland, many in the gas chambers of death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. Poland held a series of war crimes trials after the war, but nearly a decade elapsed after the collapse of communism before that effort was renewed with the creation of the IPN in 1998. "It has an immense moral and pedagogical significance that these crimes do not go unpunished," said Feliks Tych, head of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. "In many cases, nothing has been done for decades and murderers have been living in peace in Latin America, the U.S. or in a village near Lublin (Poland). The passage of time does not matter; these matters must not be left buried in ash," he added. The IPN's prosecutor in Lublin said he was confident of gathering sufficient evidence to file charges against and seek the extradition of U.S. residents Bronislaw H. and Jacob R., and Dymitro S., who lives in Germany. The three are suspected of undergoing SS training before joining the "Aktion Reinhardt" operation to wipe out Jews living in the General Government, German-occupied southern and central Poland, where most death camps were sited. "It is our intention to extradite them, but first we must gather sufficient evidence to present formal charges in Poland," prosecutor Andrzej Witkowski told Reuters. The suspects are thought to have been born in what is now Ukraine. Witkowski also wants to establish the real identity of a notorious camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible", who was stationed at the Treblinka camp northeast of Warsaw where over 800,000 Jews were killed. Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk was found in 1993 not to have been Ivan the Terrible by the Israeli Supreme Court, which overturned an earlier death sentence after evidence pointed to another suspect. The IPN's branch in southern Katowice is also investigating a suspect called Bogdan Koziy, who allegedly killed dozens of Jews while serving as a policeman in then eastern Poland. "He is currently living in Costa Rica. We will most likely apply for his extradition," prosecutor Ewa Koj told Reuters.

Reuters 4 Feb 2003 Poland Launches New 'Ivan the Terrible' Probe Tue February 4, 2003 07:08 AM ET (clarifying in first paragraph that probe is attempt to establish identity, not build a case; adding in fourth paragraph that Demjanjuk was cleared in Israel) By Marcin Grajewski WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland Monday launched a probe into World War II mass murders of Jews by four alleged Nazi henchmen, marking a new attempt to establish the identity of a feared SS death camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible." The four are suspected of committing genocide between 1942 and 1944 in Nazi death camps sited in Poland and the liquidation of urban ghettoes into which Jews were rounded up. (clarifying in first paragraph that probe is attempt to establish identity, not build a case; adding that Demjanjuk was cleared in Israel) "One of the suspects is Ivan the Terrible," prosecutor Andrzej Witkowski, of the National Remembrance Institute (IPN), told Reuters. "We hope to reach significant conclusions in the first half of this year." The IPN, responsible for prosecuting crimes against the nation, said in a statement that John Demjanjuk had been identified as "Ivan the Terrible" at a 1986 trial in Israel, even though he was cleared later in Israel based on evidence another man was the sadistic killer. Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who emigrated to the United States in 1952, was sentenced to death at a sensational trial before the verdict was overturned by Israel's Supreme Court. The IPN said it was launching its investigation with the help of evidence from the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem and German prosecutors. Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, an estimated three million died in Poland, many in the gas chambers of purpose-built Nazi death camps. SUSPECTS IN GERMANY, U.S. The other three suspects were identified as Dymitro S., now residing in Germany, and Bronislaw H. and Jacob R., who live in the United States. The IPN alleged the four had undergone training at an SS camp in Trawniki before joining the "Aktion Reinhardt" operation to wipe out Jews on the territory of the General Government, or German-occupied central and southern Poland. They were also suspected of committing genocide at Poland's Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka death camps, the Poniatowa labor camp and the liquidation of the Bialystok, Czestochowa, Lublin and Warsaw ghettoes. An estimated 840,000 Jews died at the Treblinka camp, 50 miles northeast of Warsaw.

ICRC 4 Feb 2003 ICRC News 03/14 Belarus : War crimes seminar At the end of January, the Belarusian committee tasked with adapting national legislation to conform with international humanitarian law held a joint seminar on preventing and punishing war crimes. Some sixty people attended this ICRC-supported event, including personnel from the Belarusian supreme court, other civilian courts and military tribunals, plus academics and members of the armed forces. A Belgian judge, a lawyer from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and a Russian professor of criminal law also attended in their capacities as specialists. Belarus introduced a new penal code in January 2001, with particularly comprehensive provision for the repression of war crimes. This seminar was an opportunity to look at the new code in detail, and provided much-needed training for judges on its humanitarian law aspects. Similar seminars will be taking place shortly in other CIS countries that have adopted a new penal code. From its regional delegation in Kyiv (Ukraine), the ICRC is working to promote international humanitarian law in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, and encouraging the authorities to implement this branch of the law.

Ukrainian Survivors of the 1932-1933 Holodomor (manmade famine/genocide) in Soviet-occupied Ukraine appearing in the 2002 Four-Hour Television Documentary "The Genocide Factor: From The Bible To Present Day" (www.genocidefactor.com ): Maria Boshyk , Bishop Alexander Bykowetz, Benjamin Chmilenko, Pavlo Makohon, Valentina Podadz