Poroshenko the “Civilized”

[newthinking]

A very good read:

Halyna Mokrushyna is currently enrolled in the PhD program in Sociology at the University of Ottawa and a part-time professor. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and MA degree in communication. Her academic interests include: transitional justice; collective memory; ethnic studies; dissent movement in Ukraine; history of Ukraine; sociological thought. Her doctoral project deals with the memory of Stalinist purges in Ukraine. In the summer of 2013 she travelled to Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk to conduct her field research. She is currently working on completing her thesis.

January 14, 2015
The Other Ukraine Must be Heard
Poroshenko the “Civilized”
by HALYNA MOKRUSHYNA

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/14/poroshenko-the-civilized/

President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine stated in Paris on January 11 that the Charlie Hebdo tragedy has united all civilized countries. He marched proudly at the front line of the huge crowd of “civilized people” who were expressing their solidarity with freedom of speech against terrorism. Poroshenko’s participation in the march presumably qualifies Ukraine as one of the “civilized countries”. He is outraged by the terrible attack on Western values, in whose name the Ukrainian army is bombing and shelling its own citizens in the Donbas region in the east of the country.

Over 4,800 civilians have died since the Ukrainian government launched an “anti-terroristic operation” against Donbas in April 2014. Donbas did not want a nationalist parliament and nationalist ideology which refuse to Russian-speaking citizens the right to have their language recognized as the second official language of Ukraine. Donbas rejects the anti-Russian and anti-Soviet interpretation of history which the extremist parties making up the majority of the Parliament are imposing on Ukraine. Donbas takes pride in its Soviet past. Donbas is different from the rest of Ukraine first of all in these two features.

It is an industrial region in which 75% of the population considers Russian to be its mother tongue–even though over half of the residents of the region (57%) are ethnic Ukrainians, according to the Ukrainian census of 2001. In Donetsk city, the dominance of Russian language is even higher – 88% versus 11% of people for whom Ukrainian is a mother tongue. The ethnicity of Donetsk’s residents is split roughly evenly – 47% Ukrainian versus 48% Russian.

One of the first steps of the new, right-wing government that seized power in Kyiv in late February of last year largely thanks to nationalistic, paramilitary units of the ‘Euromaidan’ movement, was an attempt to abolish Ukraine’s law on languages. This law, adopted in 2012 in an effort to quell tensions being created by right-wing nationalists, granted the right to use Russian and other minority languages in regions where this minority constitutes at least 10% of the local population. Minority language services would be provided and used in public administration, education and cultural activities. This attempt to abolish the law on languages sent a clear signal to Donbas: the new Ukrainian regime will continue to implement their nationalist agenda. Donbas rebelled.

Continued:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/14/poroshenko-the-civilized/