Andrey Stavitsky: White paper - Kiev authorities before the court of the world community
After the publication of the “White Book of Human Rights Violations and the Rule of Law in Ukraine (November 2013 – March 2014)”, which was prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, interest arose in the world in the phenomenon of “white books”, including their nature, purpose and history.
The following can be briefly reported on this matter. The world knows the so-called “color books”, including the “Red Book” with rare animals listed in it and the “Green Book” of the late Muammar Gaddafi about the special path of human development. But “White Papers” occupy a special place in this list. They usually mean collections of documents prepared for the purpose of making a specific political decision.
Among these, perhaps the most famous are those issued by order of the British government from 1922 to 1939. six “white books” devoted to the Middle East question and the problem of Jewish resettlement.
In addition to Great Britain, “white books” were also published in Germany (since 1870), Greece, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Hungary, East Germany, Vietnam and the USSR. But the problems they addressed were different. Thus, the “white papers” in Germany were mainly devoted to colonial issues. In Hungary – the 1956 coup attempt. In Vietnam - US war crimes. At one time, the “white papers” condemning the persecution of dissidents in the USSR had a wide public response. Now the time has come to raise and discuss the issue of Nazi crimes of the new Kyiv authorities. It is this issue that the “White Book” prepared by the Russian Foreign Ministry is devoted to in order to attract the attention of the world community to massive violations of human rights in Ukraine.
Now activists in the South-East are preparing a similar work - a new version of the White Book.
It must be said that the publication of the Russian White Paper and its presentation on the Internet aroused great interest. Although its reception was mixed. Critics of the White Paper were particularly dissatisfied by two circumstances:
1) why the White Book of the Russian Federation does not mention human rights violations by the government of V.F. Yanukovych?
2) what does Russia care about this?
A typical phrase from Ukrainian bloggers and politicians regarding the pogroms with numerous casualties carried out in Odessa and Mariupol, as well as the murders of civilians in Donetsk, Kramatorsk, Slavyansk: “Let the Ukrainians sort out their problems themselves.”
In my mind, this is analogous to the statement "Don't stop us from persecuting and killing people."
The question is: when some group of people kills someone before your eyes, and when you try to intervene, they respond that this is our internal dispute and we will sort it out ourselves, do we have the right to help someone who is not being beaten, but is being killed before our eyes? Actually, this is our HUMAN DUTY.
Every person, if he wants to continue to be considered a human being, must at least express his attitude towards this. And from this point of view, someone should have started at least systematizing the crimes that the ruling regime in Kyiv managed to commit in just a few months.
In addition, it is worth recalling that the United States has a way of opening a “case” against those states that cannot boast of American democracy, but have oil or occupy a strategic position in the region, for human rights violations. As an example of such actions, we can recall how the American Congress created a special commission to study the Holodomor of 1932-1933. in Ukraine, completely forgetting that at the same time in the United States millions of people were dying of hunger.
And how many Americans exterminated the Indians of North America, clearing vital space for themselves, is impossible to count. The history of millions of deaths occurred during the bombing of peaceful villages and cities by American aircraft in Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Libya and Iraq.
From this point of view, America still awaits its own “white paper”. But for now we are not talking about her.
Massacres of the so-called. “Russian-speaking” population, concealing the genocide of the Russian population of Ukraine requires special investigation. And sooner or later, the perpetrators will answer for the destruction of hundreds of people whose guilt was only that they spoke Russian, opposed Nazism and defended their views on the future of Ukraine. Therefore, it is extremely important that the crimes of the Kyiv authorities, including the use of prohibited types of weapons against the civilian population, are investigated, and everyone involved in them bears responsibility for them: from the president to the specific perpetrator.
In turn, opponents dissatisfied with the White Book, reproaching it for being biased, write that it does not even mention the “cleansing of Instytutskaya”, the beating of T. Chernovol, the kidnapping of Maidan activists and the killing of people by snipers. And it is true. However, to what extent the government of V.F. Yanukovych is to blame for these actions is not yet clear. This is especially true in history, when a group of snipers killed both employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and protesters from the Maidan, their actions actually creating the conditions for the victory of the Ukrainian opposition and the flight of the president from the country. Moreover, there is reason to believe that the snipers were hired by the Maidan leaders. What the world learned from a telephone conversation between EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet. This means that it is possible that this “story” will later be included in the rapidly growing list of crimes of the radicals who brought to power first A. Turchynov and A. Parubiy, and then P. Poroshenko, who started with Maidan and want to end with “Maidanek” .
It is clear that the White Book on crimes against civilians in Ukraine cannot replace a comprehensive international investigation and record all the facts of atrocities. But she is quite capable of attracting the attention of the world community to the Ukrainian Tragedy and raising the question of the responsibility of the Ukrainian government for what is happening on its territory, providing a factual and legislative basis for its conclusions.
From this point of view, anyone who starts a war of extermination against his own people must know and remember that his crimes will be revealed and investigated, and the criminals will be exposed and punished. But this is not the main thing. Even if someone in Ukraine manages to evade responsibility, he must know that these crimes make any government lawless and illegitimate before history. And Ukraine is no exception.
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