Ukraine Update: Kiev Labels 7 Million People 'Terrorists', Slaughters Civilians And Plans Banning Of Communist Party By Countercurrents

Ukraine Update: Kiev Labels 7 Million People 'Terrorists',
Slaughters Civilians And Plans Banning Of Communist Party

By Countercurrents

22 May, 2014
Countercurrents.org

A boy places flowers in front of a gutted police station building in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine May 10, 2014. (Reuters / Marko Djurica)

Neo-Nazi led authorities in Kiev has termed 7 million people in the eastern region as terrorists. The neo-Nazis are slaughtering people. The Kiev authorities are planning, as initial steps of fascist character, of banning the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Media reports on Ukraine said:

Pyotr Simonenko, the leader of Ukraine 's Communist Party, says the Kiev regime killed peaceful civilians in the country's southeast, and is spreading lies about the real situation. The Ukrainian parliament is now seeking to expel communists and ban their activity.

“In Maripoul there was a slaughter of civilians, a mass murder. The number of those killed, first of all among peaceful civilians, is being concealed. A peaceful demonstration was shot at on May 9 and it was a murder carried out by the current regime. There was a shooting of peaceful civilians; there was no one with weapons there. When you, using armored personnel carrier guns, killed a family of three, shot [them] in their kitchen, this is what you must be held accountable for; there is blood on your hands today,” said Simonenko. He was addressing Ukraine 's coup-appointed acting president Aleksandr Turchinov while speaking at parliament's conciliatory council on May 12.

Simonenko, who is a presidential candidate, was referring to the armed assault of Kiev 's army on Mariupol's police headquarters on May 9, when nine people were killed and another 49 were injured, including a freelance video journalist working for RT.

“In Mariupol [you] killed and shot down police department personnel only for refusal to comply with the criminal order to disperse protesters during the May 9 demonstration,” Simonenko said.

Simonenko has called on Kiev to stop its “anti-terrorist operation,” saying it has now turned into a “terrorist operation against its own people.”

“You declared seven million people living in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions as 'terrorists.' They went out yesterday [to vote in the referendum], stood in lines since 6 a.m. to vote against Kiev rule, against this regime, against your policy,” he said.

Ending the military operation in Ukraine 's southeast is “the first of what the Communist Party demands.” It is also calling on Kiev to accept the results of the federalization referendum.

“Your policy resulted in Ukraine losing Crimea . Now your policy is leading to the point where seven million people of Ukraine , 30 percent of the country's GDP, reject their future with Ukraine ,” he stressed.

According to Simonenko, the recent events in the cities of Odessa and Mariupol show that Kiev is trying to impose a “nationalist-fascist regime.”

Pyotr Simonenko. (RIA Novosti / Vladimir Fedorenko)

“These events show that those who had another point of view were burned in a fire of inquisition at the Odessa Trade Unions House. They were burned alive! They were utterly beaten with metal rods when they tried to leave the building or jump out of windows. They were destroyed because they, Ukrainian citizens, had a different point of view,” he said.

In response to Simonenko's accusations, coup-appointed acting president Turchinov heckled the Communist Party leader and accused him of lies and dissemination of false information.

"You have neither conscience nor honor. Take your place, liar. I order you to stop your speech," said Turchinov.

Turchinov then asked the Kiev authority's justice ministry to look into the Communist Party's alleged separatist activities and possibly ban the group.

The Communist Party says there are no legal grounds for such a measure.

However, the leader of the nationalist Svoboda party, presidential candidate Oleg Tyagnibok, has claimed that his party has collected documents that would allow the Kiev 's justice ministry to ban the Communist Party and the Party of Regions.

The Party of Regions has also spoken against Kiev 's actions in southeast Ukraine and called on officials to stop their “punitive” actions. In order to prevent Ukraine from splitting, Kiev should “sit down at a negotiation table,” the Party of Regions stressed.

“To listen to you Mr. Turchinov, as you said, only 30 percent of people of Donbass voted. I want to remind you that this is 2.5 million people; they expressed their will. In any country in the world, 2.5 million people is a real power, which a government should listen to,” Party of Regions representative Nikolay Levchenko said at the Ukrainian parliament, Verkhovna Rada, while calling Kiev officials “neo-Nazis” and “bandits.”

Simonenko also slammed the Victory Day speech of Kherson governor Yury Odarchenko, who stated that Hitler tried to liberate Ukraine .

“At the Victory Day celebration, he says that Hitler did the right thing when he invaded our country to ‘liberate' the people of Ukraine from communists. This was said by a person who is either an idiot or a thug,” Simonenko said.

Odarchenko responded by saying he will sue Simonenko.

“I am suing you for a bald-faced lie, for slander, for cowardly and shameful propaganda,” Odarchenko told the Communist Party leader.

Though Odarchenko says Simonenko's accusations are a lie, the moment when he said the statement about Hitler was caught on video.

The Communist Party of Ukraine, which has been openly speaking against Kiev 's coup-imposed regime since February, has faced increased confrontation since last week. On May 6, Ukrainian lawmakers accused the group of separatism and expelled it from a closed-door parliamentary hearing. It was the first time in Ukraine 's post-Soviet history that such a decision had been made.

Plan to ban Communist Party of Ukraine opposed

Russia 's KPRF has attacked plans of the acting Ukrainian president to ban the Communist party of Ukraine , as a threat to all leftist and patriotic forces, and says such a step is typical of fascist regimes of the past.

“ All fascist regimes in the world started their activities with a ban on Communist parties. Such threats are a threat to all leftist popular and patriotic forces ,” the leader of Russian Communists, Gennady Zyuganov, said at a roundtable in the State Duma on May 21, 2014.

Zyuganov said the Communist Party of the Russian Federation had prepared a draft motion against the attempts to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine, and would submit it to the Lower House in the near future.

The Communist Party chief also expressed doubted the situation in Ukraine would change after the forthcoming presidential poll there. “ The suggestion that anything would settle there after May 25 is just an illusion. Presently, there are no conditions in Ukraine for holding normal elections ,” he said.

Zyuganov called for Russian authorities to give greater support to the residents of the south-eastern regions of Ukraine who support the federalization of the country. “ No one is demanding to send in troops, but we have a right to support our friends and brothers ,”he stated.

“ It is our duty to express our common will and do everything to help the Ukrainian people get rid of the fascist junta that tries to establish itself with US guidance ,” Zyuganov told the Russian parliamentarians.

The center-left Fair Russia party has backed the initiative.

“ We are unconditionally supporting the motion in support of the Ukrainian Communist Party because while approaches to ideology might differ, a ban on a political parliamentary party in any country is nonsense, and should not be allowed ,” Fair Russia leader Sergey Mironov has said.

State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin said that the Ukraine communist leader Symonenko had planned to attend the roundtable in Russia but could not do so because of threats to his personal safety made in Ukraine .

Naryshkin added that Symonenko had to withdraw from the Ukrainian presidential race for the same reason.

Ukraine MPs call for immediate troop pullout from the east

Ukrainian troops deployed in the country's east should immediately return to their bases, the country's parliament said in a memorandum.

The freshly-adopted document also urges constitutional reforms based on the decentralization of Kiev 's power.

With 226 votes required to pass the law, the Ukrainian parliament finally adopted the so-called ‘Memorandum of Peace and Consent', 252 MPs voting in favor.

In particular, the document calls "to restore law, order and public safety in the state by stopping bloodshed and bringing to justice those responsible for the killings of civilians during mass protests; to stop the anti-terrorist operation in Ukraine 's southeast and return the soldiers involved in anti-terrorist operations to their places of permanent deployment.”

The adopted document also urges for immediate constitutional reform that will grant more autonomy to regions – a key demand of the protesters in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

As hopes for federalization grew thin, eastern regions created self-defense forces and seized government buildings. On May 11 referendums were held in Donetsk and Lugansk regions and independence was proclaimed.

The document made a point "to grant the status to the Russian language," but stopped short from giving it the constitutional status.

The provision to grant amnesty to self-defense forces in the east was dropped from the final draft of the memorandum. This was harshly criticized by the Communist Party, who abstained from the vote.

Following the announcement, Russia said that if Ukraine 's authorities plan to implement all the reforms declared in the memorandum then they will finally be responding to Moscow 's calls.

"First, we have to see how it looks on paper. If this is true then it's the development we have been talking about over the past months,” said Deputy Head of the Russian Foreign Ministry Grigory Karasin, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

Donetsk Republic won't participate in Ukraine presidential poll

A member of the federalization supporters' self-defense movement at the barricades with flag of the Donetsk People's Republic (RIA Novosti/Mikhail Voskresenskiy)

The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) won't participate in the election of the Ukrainian president on May 25, says the new prime minister of the breakaway region in the East of the country.

“There won't be any presidential elections on the territory of the republic,” announced Aleksandr Borodai, who was elected leader of the self-proclaimed republic on May 16, 2014.

Donetsk , along with the neighboring Lugansk region recently proclaimed self-rule, after May-11 referendums.

The Ukrainian coup-imposed government listed the self-proclaimed republics as ‘terrorist' organizations and launched criminal cases to investigate their formation.

Donetsk republic, for its part, considers the Kiev regime “occupiers” of its territory.

“Here is a sovereign state – Donetsk People's Republic. We are entitled to decide ourselves what will be done on our territory,” the republic's press-service told Itar-Tass on May 17, 2014. “We consider Ukraine 's attempt to have elections here as an activity of another state on an occupied territory.”

As long as there are Kiev forces on the region's soil, the Donetsk Republic government is not going to have a dialogue with Kiev , Borodai told journalists.

“We are not holding any talks with Kiev authorities, as the republic is practically in a war. Part of it is occupied by forces of a real rival,” he said.

Meanwhile, Donetsk and Lugansk republics are considering possible forms of merging into a union state, the DNR press-service said.