"Real Prospect of a return to totalitarian days"

  Photo: Radio Svoboda

The Congress of National Communities of Ukraine and the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities [VAAD] have issued a joint statement in response to the dispersing of a peaceful demonstration on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv on Nov 30.

For the first time in all the years of Ukraine’s independence events have taken place which force us to turn for support to European bodies and the world community since for the first time we are seeing the real prospect of a return to totalitarian Soviet times.

At 4 a.m. on Nov 30 the peaceful demonstration under the banner “For European integration” was brutally dispersed. Dozens of unarmed young people were brutally beaten and injured; dozens were detained by the police.  This was preceded by the assault on journalists and police officers by thugs hired by the authorities in Mariyinsky Park.

As of Saturday morning, Nov.30, Berkut riot police had surrounded the Mykhailivsky Monastery where the physically and psychologically battered peaceful demonstrators were taking refuge. The monks of the Mykhailivsky Cathedral saved the demonstrators from Berkut batons.

Civil society cannot accept such brutal actions as the “building of Europe in Ukraine”.

We condemn the bloody dispersing of a peaceful demonstration and violence against protesters on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. We demand condemnation of the bloody actions by police officers under the orders of those in power and support for Ukrainians’ struggle for the right to freely express their civic position regarding the future fate of our country.