Ukraine

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I welcome this debate initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) on the situation in Ukraine, but I wish to go back in time a little and speak about the tragic legacy of the Ukrainian holodomor, from 1932 to 1933, which continues to have an enormous impact on the Ukrainian people today.

The holodomor was a forced famine orchestrated by Joseph Stalin’s communist regime and it resulted in the deaths of millions of Ukrainian people. It was a crime fuelled by a repugnant political ideology. Stalin wanted to starve the so-called rebellious Ukrainian peasantry into submission and force them into collective farms. Subsequently, the Ukrainian countryside, once home to the “black earth”—some of the most fertile land in the world—was reduced to a wasteland. The holodomor stole away between 7 million and 10 million people. Entire villages were wiped out, and in some regions the death rate reached one third of the population.

Inevitably, the events of the Ukrainian holodomor undermined national confidence. It continues to have an impact on the consciousness of current generations, as it will future generations. Indeed, the many descendants of Ukrainian people in this country are still very concerned about what happened. Last month, I held a Westminster Hall debate on the issue, in which I called for the Government to recognise the holodomor as a genocide. As the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said so pertinently in that debate:

“No one can visit Ukraine today without seeing that it is still a live wound, a bruise and a source of pain.”—[Official Report, 7 November 2017; Vol. 630, c. 551WH.]

[John Howell]

My hon. Friend mentions the word “genocide”. Does she recognise that without Ukraine, we would not have the term “genocide” or, indeed, “crimes against humanity”? As Philippe Sands pointed out in his book, it was the invention of those at the time of the second world war that has prompted all our subsequent activity in this area.

[Mrs Latham]

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because I will come on to that. It seems ironic that that is where the term “genocide” came from, yet this country does not recognise it.

On 7 December it was the 85th anniversary of this atrocity. I was pleased to see that the UK was represented by the British embassy’s chargé d’affaires during the commemoration service held by President Poroshenko on 25 November. The Ukrainian people have suffered for so long. Following the 85th anniversary, now is an appropriate time to officially accept that the holodomor was a genocide. Acknowledging that would be in accordance with the Ukrainian people’s wishes.

In 2006, the Government of Ukraine passed a law recognising the disaster as genocide against the Ukrainian people and have sought for the international community to follow suit. Many countries have recognised this, including the US, Canada, Australia and many others. Since the formation of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, which was adopted by the UN Assembly in 1948, it has been possible to designate events. This has strengthened the hand of the international community, if it wants to take action in those cases.

The Government’s current position is that international law cannot be applied retrospectively unless subject to a legal decision. I understand that the holocaust, although it took place before 1948, has an exclusive status, since it was the basis for the legal determination of genocide by the convention. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) said, it was actually the holodomor that started it. It should be noted that the holodomor was directly referred to by Raphael Lemkin, the author of the convention, as a classic example of genocide. We recognise the Jewish holocaust retrospectively, so why do we not recognise the holodomor, which started before the second world war, nearly two or three years before the holocaust?

If the Government maintain their position, I ask again: will they consider initiating an inquiry or judicial process to help ensure the Ukrainian holodomor is given its rightful status as a genocide? I understand that the 1994 killings in Rwanda and the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica were both recognised as genocides as a result of legal proceedings. It is only right that the UK accepts the definition of the Ukrainian holodomor as a genocide. It would be a mark of our respect and our friendship with the Ukrainian people today. We must expose violations of human rights, preserve historical records and help to restore the dignity of victims through the acknowledgment of their suffering.